| From: | Kevin Grittner <kgrittn(at)ymail(dot)com> |
|---|---|
| To: | Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, Gavin Flower <GavinFlower(at)archidevsys(dot)co(dot)nz> |
| Cc: | Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com>, Florian Pflug <fgp(at)phlo(dot)org>, Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>, Brendan Jurd <direvus(at)gmail(dot)com>, Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org> |
| Subject: | Re: [PATCH] Exorcise "zero-dimensional" arrays (Was: Re: Should array_length() Return NULL) |
| Date: | 2013-04-03 18:28:15 |
| Message-ID: | 1365013695.18232.YahooMailNeo@web162901.mail.bf1.yahoo.com |
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| Lists: | pgsql-hackers |
Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Fortran ... Basic ... actually I'd have thought that zero was a
> minority position. Fashions change I guess.
When I started programming the top four languages for business
programming were COBOL, BASIC, RPG II, and assembly language.
(Pascal and C came later, and I never saw much use of Fortran by
anyone other than mathematicians.) Except for assembly language,
the subscripts for arrays either started with 1 always, or that was
the default. Given when it was first developed, it's not too
surprising that the SQL standard adopted 1 as the first element of
an array.
Which is more natural depends on whether you think of the subscript
in terms of ordinal positions or offsets from the base address.
--
Kevin Grittner
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company
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