[R] Zero Index Origin?

[John Fox]

Dear Bob,

One approach would be to introduce a class of objects for which zero-based
indexing is implemented. Here's a simple example:

> "[.io0" <- function(x, i) as.vector(x)[i + 1]
> 
> v <- 0:10
> class(v) <- "io0"
> v[0]
[1] 0
> v[0:5]
[1] 0 1 2 3 4 5
> 

Of course, a serious implementation would handle arrays and perhaps other
kinds of objects, and would be more careful about the subscript.

I hope that this helps,
 John 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Bob Cain
> Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 3:16 AM
> To: R-help
> Subject: [R] Zero Index Origin?
> 
> 
> I'm very new to R and utterly blown away by not only the 
> language but the unbelievable set of packages and the 
> documentation and the documentation standards and...
> 
> I was an early APL user and never lost my love for it and in 
> R I find most of the essential things I loved about APL 
> except for one thing.  At this early stage of my learning I 
> can't yet determine if there is a way to effect what in APL 
> was zero index origin, the ordinality of indexes starts with 
> 0 instead of 1.  Is it possible to effect that in R without a 
> lot of difficulty?
> 
> I come here today from the world of DSP research and 
> development where Matlab has a near hegemony.  I see no 
> reason whatsoever that R couldn't replace it with a _far_ 
> better and _far_ less idiosyncratic framework.  I'd be 
> interested in working on a Matlab equivalent DSP package for 
> R (if that isn't being done by someone) and one of the things 
> most criticized about Matlab from the standpoint of the DSP 
> programmer is its insistence on 1 origin indexing. 
> Any feedback greatly appreciated.
>