Re: [boost] Re: Re: [string algo formal review]

From: Pavol Droba (droba_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-10-29 11:14:08

On Wed, Oct 29, 2003 at 10:17:55AM -0500, Rob Stewart wrote:

[snip]
 
> I couldn't disagree more.  Were I reviewing that code without
> knowing a priori that find_nth() used zero-based numbering, I'd
> flag that as an error.  The *name* find_nth() invokes ordinals
> and there's no 0th.  One poster suggested that the year before
> one's first birthday, is the 0th year.  Sorry, but I've never
> heard anyone mention the 0th year of a child's life.

There is always quite a big difference between human language
and formal/scientific definitions.

1st year is actualy something between 0 and 0.9999... so it has
naturaly the index 0. 

> If you change "nth" in "find_nth" to something else, or rename
> the function altogether, we avoid the confusion.
>

Actualy, I don't know about any native C/C++ entity which has 1-based
indexing, so does not have to be so unnatural as it seems. 
I have updated docs with explicit note, that the index is 0-based.

To improve the naming, I can change the name of paramter from "nth" to "index".
This way the "find_nth" function will search for an n-th occurence of the
matching string, referenced by an "index".

Would this make this matter more clear?

Regards,

Pavol