Yet Another Modest Proposal

[gfish]

The subject of using 'zero-eth' as the ordinal for zero came up today. While amusing, it's really an ugly construction. 1, 2 and 3 get a special ordinal (first, second, third) so it only seems right that 0 should as well. Something that flows slightly better than 'zero-eth' would also be nice.

In the spirit of the -bi binary unit prefixes, I am going to arbitrarily introduce one and hope it catches on. Ahem.

My proposal for the first ordinal when indexing from zero is 'nauth'.
Usage example: The nauth element of the buffer had better be '\0' or else strcat is going to overflow like the Johnstown Dam.

Comments

pronounciation guide

[tithonium.livejournal.com]

Is that 'nowth' or 'nawth'?
I vote 'nowth'

[rollick.livejournal.com]

I like "nonth" (rhymes with "month") myself.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

In my book, "first" is the ordinal for zero, "second" for one etc. Or rather, "zero" is the cardinal for first, "one" is the cardinal for second etc. It's a software thing...