Why Python does *SLICING* the way it does??

[Terry Hancock]

On Wednesday 20 April 2005 12:28 pm, Roy Smith wrote:
> Terry Hancock wrote:
> >> I used to make "off by one" errors all the time in both C and Fortran,
> >> whereas I hardly ever make them in Python. 
> 
> Part of the reason may be that most loops over lists involve
> iterators, 

> both endpoints are mentioned explicitly.  C++/STL also uses iterators,
> but the syntax is repulsive.

That's true of course.  It's more likely to show up in manipulating
lists or strings.  And Python provides a much richer environment for
processing strings, so one has to deal with explicit indexing much
less.

But I still think that I make fewer error per instance of dealing with
intervals. It's rare that I even have to think about it much when
writing such a thing.   Negative indexing also helps a lot.

Terry

--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com