[TUHS] Array index history

[Pete Turnbull]

On 09/06/2017 00:16, Ron Natalie wrote:
> 
>> FORTRAN, yes. BASIC (which dialect might we be talking about?) normally
> actually start with 0. However, BASIC is weird, in that the DIM statement is
> actually specifying the highest usable index, and not the size of the array.
> 
> Eh?  Not in any BASIC I ever used.   They all started at 1.   Can't vouch
> for the later Microsoft "visual" variants but the original 1970's era BASIC
> started with 1.
> DIM X(10) gave you ten elements from 1...10

Well, my experience matches Johnny's.  I used many derivatives of 
MicroSoft BASIC - PET, Apple INTBASIC, Applesoft, Exidy Sorcerer, and 
others - and they all start at 0.  AFAIR HP BASIC did so as well.  The 
original 1960s Dartmouth BASIC (for which I have a copy of the manual) 
also started at 0 (cf. page 38); indeed if you didn't explicitly DIM an 
array, you got eleven elements indexed 0...10.

-- 
Pete
Pete Turnbull