Re: [RFC PATCH] line-log: clarify [a,b) notation for ranges

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Aug 9, 2018, 12:50 UTC
Message-ID: <nycvar.QRO.7.76.6.1808091448260.71@tvgsbejvaqbjf.bet>
In-Reply-To: <CAPig+cTVEq1AGvtxxonbU4PgqeG0fOy9CSDO7ThjVpfGoJaAJA@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Eric,

On Tue, 7 Aug 2018, Eric Sunshine wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> On Tue, Aug 7, 2018 at 9:54 AM Andrei Rybak <rybak.a.v@gmail.com> wrote:
> > line-log.[ch] use left-closed, right-open interval logic. Change comment
> > and debug output to square brackets+parentheses notation to help
> > developers avoid off-by-one errors.
> > ---
> 
> This seems sensible. There might be some reviewers who suggest
> different notation since "[...)" is not universal (see [1]), but I
> think this is fine.

Indeed. When I started out studying mathematics, I learned the notation [...[ (which makes a lot more sense, if you think about it).

Besides, it's not like we start from a fresh slate. Git is already over a decade old. Our commit ranges are "half open", i.e. the exact thing that is described here. There's gotta be some precedent in the documentation, and introducing something willfully inconsistent is probably a pretty bad idea.

Ciao, Dscho