1w ago

oddly specific

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Wouldn't max value for 8 bit (unsigned) integer be 255? Like the number has 256 distinct values, but that includes 0.
- If this is about a counter for users in the chat, sure. But if this is an array of users indexed by an 8-bit number, then it will fit 256 slots with the first slot being numbered 0.
  
  Fair, sounds reasonable
  
  this guy indexes
  
  Unless it's lua, then screw anyone programming with it.
  Have to use lua for my current project and the 1-based indexing is really screwing with me.
- Right but having a group chat of size 0 isn’t very useful.
  
  Not to be snarky, in programming there's rarely (in situations like this) a reason to keep count. Computers are exceptionally good at counting integers so they'd just count individual client id's (however they've implemented that system), not keeping toll on how many clients are in a group chat.
  So one client, be it at position zero is a one client group. Add another client at position one and you have two clients and a two person group.
  
  I don't think it's the variable for counting the number of us in a group that's the issue here. There'll be some internal tracker that gives everyone in the chat group a local ID probably for the purposes of ensuring that everyone stays in sync.
  If you leave the group and then go into a different chat group you'll probably have a different number in that group because the internal counter is specific to the chat, not to the user ID which will be a unique ID used across all interactions for that phone number.
  
  What would 0 represent then?
  
  one person, and 255 would represent 256 people
  
  The first index
  
  The limit isn't on the actual count of people, it's likely the size of the chat user id number.
- And programmers usually start counting at 0.
  
  Your thinking indexing, 0 is still 0 when counting.
- The number of distinct values are what matters.
- You're thinking of the highest integer number, not the "number of numbers" - which is 256, from 0 to 255, and thus 256 possible users in a group chat.
- Computers start counting at zero, (unless it's python) so the first person in the group would be ID 0, the second person would be ID 1
  
  At a basic level python normally counts from zero (indices as an example)

198 comments