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

[Antoon Pardon]

Op 2005-04-20, Roy Smith schreef <roy at panix.com>:
> Antoon Pardon  <apardon at forel.vub.ac.be> wrote:
>>Op 2005-04-20, Roy Smith schreef <roy at panix.com>:
>>> Antoon Pardon <apardon at forel.vub.ac.be> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Personnaly I would like to have the choice. Sometimes I prefer to
>>>> start at 0, sometimes at 1 and other times at -13 or +7.
>>>
>>> Argggh.  Having two (or more!) ways to do it, would mean that every time I 
>>> read somebody else's code, I would have to figure out which flavor they are 
>>> using before I could understand what their code meant.  That would be evil.
>>
>>This is nonsens. table[i] = j, just associates value j with key i.
>>That is the same independend from whether the keys can start from
>>0 or some other value. Do you also consider it more ways because
>>the keys can end in different values?
>
> There are certainly many examples where the specific value of the
> first key makes no difference.  A good example would be
>
>     for element in myList:
>         print element
>
> On the other hand, what output does
>
>    myList = ["spam", "eggs", "bacon"]
>    print myList[1]
>
> produce?  In a language where some lists start with 0 and some start
> with 1, I don't have enough information just by looking at the above
> code.

Yes you have. The fact that a language allows a choice doesn't
contradict there is a default, when no choice is specified.

My preference would be that it would produce "spam", because
if you want the *first*" element, you want the element
associated withe the key 1.

Or maybe the language would force you to give a start index,
so that you would have to write:

  MyList = [3 -> "spam", "eggs", "bacon"]

End of course the language would provide instances or methods
so you could ask what the first index was.

-- 
Antoon Pardon