Always use [closed, open) intervals

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 22, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

inanutshellus wrote: post #64

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #14

> Never, ever, ever use [closed, closed] intervals I’m not really a fan of “never,” or “always” rules, when it comes to programming. I’ve found it’s usually better to have a “make sure to justify deviations from” heuristics. I usually use [closed..open) ranges (as they are called in Swift), but sometimes, an inclusive range is a lot more appropriate, for expressing an operation (for example, I may express a range as…

I've moved away from this. Advice is supposed to convey information simply and efficiently, and "asterisks" for every edge case just muddle it. Now my pet peeve has moved to folk wheedling about 100% accuracy in advice. ;-) e.g. Great advice: "Never run a red light" vs Technically-correct-but-will-never-be-read advice: "Don't run a red light, unless you're on a bicycle and you know that the intersesction you're at is…

Post by kylebyproxy » Tue, Nov 22, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

inanutshellus wrote: post #64

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #14

> Never, ever, ever use [closed, closed] intervals I’m not really a fan of “never,” or “always” rules, when it comes to programming. I’ve found it’s usually better to have a “make sure to justify deviations from” heuristics. I usually use [closed..open) ranges (as they are called in Swift), but sometimes, an inclusive range is a lot more appropriate, for expressing an operation (for example, I may express a range as…

I've moved away from this. Advice is supposed to convey information simply and efficiently, and "asterisks" for every edge case just muddle it. Now my pet peeve has moved to folk wheedling about 100% accuracy in advice. ;-) e.g. Great advice: "Never run a red light" vs Technically-correct-but-will-never-be-read advice: "Don't run a red light, unless you're on a bicycle and you know that the intersesction you're at is…

Post by weavejester » Tue, Nov 22, 2022, 3:11 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #63

Ehh, this post misses the important tidbid. You should keep your code consistent across your organization, so that a large number of programmers knows how your code works. You should have a "default writing style", and the "default writing style" should be used unless you have very, very, very good reasons to avoid it. (And an errant +1 or -1 here and there isn't a good enough reason to switch). There are four styles…

Post by teddyh » Tue, Nov 22, 2022, 3:21 PM UTC

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #15

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #14

> Never, ever, ever use [closed, closed] intervals I’m not really a fan of “never,” or “always” rules, when it comes to programming. I’ve found it’s usually better to have a “make sure to justify deviations from” heuristics. I usually use [closed..open) ranges (as they are called in Swift), but sometimes, an inclusive range is a lot more appropriate, for expressing an operation (for example, I may express a range as…

> as opposed to start.. This is not just a convenience thing. ..(end+1) is dangerous, if end is the largest representable number.

Post by notpeter » Tue, Nov 22, 2022, 3:27 PM UTC

Steltek wrote: post #62

rav wrote: post #29

Half-open intervals are why I try as much as possible to stay away from languages that use 1-based indexing (Lua, Julia, Matlab, R, ...) - 1-based indexing lends itself to closed intervals because an array of N elements has [1,N] as its index range, whereas 0-based indexing lends itself to half-open intervals because an array of N elements has [0,N) as its index range. ------- However, I know of one case where closed…

I wonder if a lot of Lua's 1-indexed pain would be avoided by encouraging for-each style loops. Unless you need a specific sub range within an array, for-each will get you pretty far.