A ruler with the logo for the Lua Programming language
this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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Why does it go to 19 and not 20? You're saving on the wrong end!
thats probably taking the piss with how lua handles array indexing.
in most programming languages,
the first element of an array is element 0,
in lua arrays start with element 1.
imo it kinda makes sense,
but it causes confusion because it goes against established conventions
The reason for the convention is that it used to be just a pointer (adress) to consecutive elements in memory. A[x] is then literally translated to the adress of A + sizeof(x)*x. Meaning that the first element is at A[0].
I mean, it's still the case under the hood, and languages like C do work that way. Sure, it's abstracted away in most programming languages these days, but if you ever need to do direct memory management, it's very much still how it works.
Scratch and Mathematica also have arrays start at one.
I never worked with lua but I get it now. Thanks!