Python Feature Request: Allow changing base of member indices to 1

[Dan Bishop]

On Apr 15, 6:06 pm, "Beliavsky" <beliav... at aol.com> wrote:
> On Apr 14, 10:12 pm, "Paddy" <paddy3... at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > So the running count is:
> >   Ayes to the left:   VB compatibility.
> >   Nays to the right:  QuadIO, Perl, Dijkstra paper.
>
> > The nays have it!
>
> One-based indexing would also Python more compatible with Fortran,
> Matlab/Octave/Scilab, and S (the language of S-Plus and R). It appears
> that engineers, scientists, and statisticians, as opposed to
> professional programmers, like 1-based indexing. An obvious argument
> for 1-based indexing in the FORmula TRANslation programming language
> is that formulas involving arrays in textbooks almost always use 1-
> based indexing.

I've seen plenty of examples of zero-based indexing in math
textbooks.  For example,  the coefficients of polynomials and Fourier
cosine series, both of which use a zero subscript for the constant
term.