rjain@acsu.buffalo.edu (Rajeev Jain) (04/30/91)
I am developing a substantial package in C which would be used by an audience that is familiar enough with computers but is not necessarily a worshipper of C. There are many arrays and I expect considerable user interaction based on the array indices. For example, the following may appear as output: The following are the species biomasses: Species # biomass(gC/m^3) 1. 2.01 2. 45.80 3. 21.09 and so on... Now my question. Real world users, me included, like to think of serial numbers starting from 1. I could make sure all output adds one to the array index before printing. While this would make the program user friendly, it would make it extremely frustrating to debug and reprogram based on the output information. This is serious because each species in my program is identified by many numbers depending on what characteristic of that species is being talked about. This must be a common enough problem and I haven't seen it mentioned on the group before. Let me know your comments. Is it a constant pain for developers? Are there standardized ways to tackle it? I would summarize any emails received. -- --- Rajeev Jain rjain@acsu.buffalo.edu