Which array element is the first? [closed]

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A few times during discussion about programming, I reached a misunderstanding, caused by different views on how consecutive zero-based array elements are referred to using ordinal numerals. There seem to be two views on that:

a[0] = "first";
a[1] = "second";
a[2] = "third;

vs:

a[0] = "zeroth";
a[1] = "first";
a[2] = "second";

I always preferred the first, knowing that "n-th" element is "element of index n-1". But I was surprised how many people found that counter-intuiti开发者_运维知识库ve and used the latter version.

Is one of those conventions more correct than the other? Which should I use during discussion or documentation to avoid misunderstanding?

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I think the English meaning of the word "first" is unambiguous, and refers to the initial element of a sequence. Having "first" refer to the successor of the initial element is just wrong.

In cases where there might be confusion, I would say "the third element, at index 2".

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The element index is pretty much language-dependent (e.g. C: 0, Lua: 1), whereas the fifth element is the fifth element, it's just the index that may be different ;)

I guess that's way too diffuse an answer...

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In some languages, such as Pascal, you can specify the range of indexes explicitly. i.e.

var stuff : array[-3..3] of integer;

stuff[-3] is still the first element in the array, not the negative third.

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Anyone saying 'zeroth' must not really believe in zero-based indexing.

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The first is the one which is first taken from the stack.