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2.6 KiB
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15 lines
2.6 KiB
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>zeroth</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../Z.html" title="Z"/><link rel="previous" href="Zero-One-Infinity-Rule.html" title="Zero-One-Infinity Rule"/><link rel="next" href="zigamorph.html" title="zigamorph"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">zeroth</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="Zero-One-Infinity-Rule.html">Prev</a><EFBFBD></td><th width="60%" align="center">Z</th><td width="20%" align="right"><EFBFBD><a accesskey="n" href="zigamorph.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="zeroth"/><dt xmlns="" id="zeroth"><b>zeroth</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="pronunciation">/zee<65>rohth/</span>, <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">adj.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> First. Among software designers, comes from C's and LISP's 0-based
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indexing of arrays. Hardware people also tend to start counting at 0
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instead of 1; this is natural since, e.g., the 256 states of 8 bits
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correspond to the binary numbers 0, 1, ..., 255 and the digital
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devices known as <span class="firstterm">counters</span> count in
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this way.</p><p>Hackers and computer scientists often like to call the first chapter
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of a publication ‘Chapter 0’, especially if it is of an
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introductory nature (one of the classic instances was in the First Edition
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of <a href="../K/K-ampersand-R.html"><i class="glossterm">K&R</i></a>). In recent
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years this trait has also been observed among many pure mathematicians (who
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have an independent tradition of numbering from 0). Zero-based numbering
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tends to reduce <a href="../F/fencepost-error.html"><i class="glossterm">fencepost error</i></a>s, though it cannot
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eliminate them entirely.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="Zero-One-Infinity-Rule.html">Prev</a><EFBFBD></td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../Z.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"><EFBFBD><a accesskey="n" href="zigamorph.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Zero-One-Infinity Rule<6C></td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"><EFBFBD>zigamorph</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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