Re: What is the history behind Natural'First = 0 ?

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@TheWorld.com>]

Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> writes:

> Wikipedia says that some definitions have "natural numbers" starting
> with 0, and others have them starting with 1 -- and the term "whole
> numbers" is sometimes used to refer to the set of all integers.

"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from."

I seem to recall an early version of Ada (or Green) that said
"subtype Natural is Integer range 1..Integer'Last;".  I could
be misremembering that, and (if true) I don't remember what the
0..Integer'Last one was called.

Speaking of zero:

Q: What caused the fall of the Roman Empire?
A: They didn't know about zero, so they had no way to terminate
the strings in their C programs.  Har, har.

- Bob