Re: should allow empty arrays

[Per Bothner <per@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jussi Piitulainen wrote:

> Per Bothner writes:
>
> > > The lower bound b and the upper bound e of a dimension are exact
> > > integers with |(<= b e)|.
> > This should be (<= b (- e 1)) if you believe in APL, which has
> > "always" allowed 0-element arrays. So does Common Lisp. I think we
> > should too,
> We do. The upper bound is excluded from the dimension, same as the
> arguments to substring in R5RS.
Sorry - I skimmed too fast.

That representation is unfortuantely not very common and it might be
confusing.  Other languages that allow arbitrary lower bounds generally
use an upper bound that is *inclusive* - think Fortran, Pascal, Ada, Algol.
Languages that use an exclusive upper bound generally hard-wire the
lower bound to 0, so the upper bound is actually the length.

That is why I think (lower-bound, length) might be less confusing,
though I agree compatibility with substring is an argument in favor
of the exclusive-lower-bound convention.

   --Per