21–30 of 129 posts
> Note that Fortran supports arrays with an arbitrary starting index, in this case -2. So this table supports indices in the range [-2, 9]. That is such a useful feature! Surprised I haven’t seen that more often. So much fiddly code exists that’s just fixing offsets to conform to 0 (or 1 for Lua) -based indexing!
Now to get the 3rd element from array, you have to know the start index, so another parameter to pass to function.
I'm somewhat surprised the physical units matter in a computer simulation. As long as the simulation is internally consistent (which I would assume the original code is) it seems odd to me that the nominal units are important at all. Is that video game character walking 100 yards? Or maybe the character is 500 feet tall and he's walking 50 leagues?
I'm somewhat surprised the physical units matter in a computer simulation. As long as the simulation is internally consistent (which I would assume the original code is) it seems odd to me that the nominal units are important at all. Is that video game character walking 100 yards? Or maybe the character is 500 feet tall and he's walking 50 leagues?
Would you want to fly in an aircraft that's been modelled with pretend computer units? Or the one that was modelled correctly in a simulator? :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you want to fly in an aircraft that's been modelled with pretend computer units? Or the one that was modelled correctly in a simulator? :)
Ok but if you did a global find-replace for "meters" with "smoots" do you think that the simulated plane would crash?
> Note that Fortran supports arrays with an arbitrary starting index, in this case -2. So this table supports indices in the range [-2, 9]. That is such a useful feature! Surprised I haven’t seen that more often. So much fiddly code exists that’s just fixing offsets to conform to 0 (or 1 for Lua) -based indexing!
not sure why would i want that. Now to get the 3rd element from array, you have to know the start index, so another parameter to pass to function.
EDIT (for more explanation): I have an input value from -10 to 100. I want to use this value to lookup something in a table. IN a ero indexed world I have to know what the lowest value is and subtract that from the input value to get to zero (so "another parameter to pass to function").
With an arbitrary start index the array is just indexed from the lowest value (-10). There is nothing more needing to be passed in.
I'm somewhat surprised the physical units matter in a computer simulation. As long as the simulation is internally consistent (which I would assume the original code is) it seems odd to me that the nominal units are important at all. Is that video game character walking 100 yards? Or maybe the character is 500 feet tall and he's walking 50 leagues?
> Note that Fortran supports arrays with an arbitrary starting index, in this case -2. So this table supports indices in the range [-2, 9]. That is such a useful feature! Surprised I haven’t seen that more often. So much fiddly code exists that’s just fixing offsets to conform to 0 (or 1 for Lua) -based indexing!
I'd agree with 1-based indexing problems, but not 0-based, which seems very natural. And if you have -2-based, I'd argue that perhaps you don't want an array.
> Note that Fortran supports arrays with an arbitrary starting index, in this case -2. So this table supports indices in the range [-2, 9]. That is such a useful feature! Surprised I haven’t seen that more often. So much fiddly code exists that’s just fixing offsets to conform to 0 (or 1 for Lua) -based indexing!
// This also supports multidimensional arrays, that is why the parameters are arrays.
var array = Array.CreateInstance(elementType: typeof(Int32), lengths: [ 5 ], lowerBounds: [ -2 ]);
// This does not compile, the type is Int32[*], not Int32[].
// Console.WriteLine(array[0]);
array.SetValue(value: 42, index: -2);
Console.WriteLine(array.GetValue(-2));Imagine trying to keep track of pounds in a single set of equations using subscripts m and f to differentiate between the units’ use for both mass and force.