Why do Lua arrays(tables) start at 1 instead of 0?

Posted by AraK on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by AraK
Published on 2010-05-07T01:52:59Z Indexed on 2010/05/07 1:58 UTC
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lua

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tables

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arrays

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array-indexing

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subjective

Hi,

I don't understand the rational behind the decision of this part of Lua. Why does indexing start at 1? I have read(as many others did) this great paper. It seems to me a strange corner of a language that is very pleasant to learn and program. Don't get me wrong, Lua is just great but there has to be an explanation somewhere. Most of what I found(on the web) is just saying the index starts at 1. Full stop.

It would be very interesting to read what its designers said about the subject.

Note that I am "very" beginner in Lua, I hope I am not missing something obvious about tables.

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