Array indexing in Matlab finally corrected after 30 years!

On Wed, 08 Apr 2015 09:52:02 -0400, robert bristow-johnson
<rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:

>AND, with that, we might have origins that are negative so that we can 
>cleanly represent negative frequency in the Fourier transform and 
>negative time for non-causal impulse responses.
>
>it's without excuse.

There's my headline for Apr 01, 2016:
"By popular demand, Matlab array indexes will now start from negative
infinity.  A[1] will refer to the element at A[-infinity + 1],  etc."

That will solve all those problems with Fourier transforms, as long as
your machine has a lot of memory.

(Actually, your idea about a selectable starting index is great, rbj)

On 4/9/15 12:41 AM, Max wrote:
> On Wed, 08 Apr 2015 09:52:02 -0400, robert bristow-johnson
> <rbj@audioimagination.com>  wrote:
>
>> AND, with that, we might have origins that are negative so that we can
>> cleanly represent negative frequency in the Fourier transform and
>> negative time for non-causal impulse responses.
>>
>> it's without excuse.
>
> There's my headline for Apr 01, 2016:
> "By popular demand, Matlab array indexes will now start from negative
> infinity.  A[1] will refer to the element at A[-infinity + 1],  etc."
>
> That will solve all those problems with Fourier transforms, as long as
> your machine has a lot of memory.
>
> (Actually, your idea about a selectable starting index is great, rbj)

it was the original idea from 2 decades ago.

 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/comp.soft-sys.matlab/2J15oSvPTGQ/JpPiJVUgItwJ 


the thread and context is

 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.soft-sys.matlab/2J15oSvPTGQ/JpPiJVUgItwJ

at that time i was able to get Cleve to notice and respond.  not so anymore.

-- 

r b-j                  rbj@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

On Thu, 09 Apr 2015 00:41:47 -0400, Max <Max@sorrynope.com> wrote:

>"By popular demand, Matlab array indexes will now start from negative
>infinity.  A[1] will refer to the element at A[-infinity + 1],  etc."
>
>That will solve all those problems with Fourier transforms, as long as
>your machine has a lot of memory.

Finally I can implement those ideal lowpass filters.

robert bristow-johnson <rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:
> On 4/8/15 8:30 AM, Randy Yates wrote:

(snip)
>> MATLAB = MATRIX Laboratory. So the same reason mathematicians
>> number their elements a_11, a_12, ..., a_21, a_22, etc. Blame
>> the mathematician who started THAT convention!
 
> yeah, but they're not always matrices.  

It took Fortran 20 years before it allowed one to specify the origin.

I haven't used Matlab so much lately, but doesn't the zero subscript
have another meaning? Or negative subscripts? I might be thinking of
R, which I have used more recently.

> in fact, the largest-selling 
> MATLAB toolbox is the Signal Processing Toolbox.  i might venture a 
> guess that the largest portion of MATLAB users are EE's doing signal 
> processing.  for EE's doing signal processing, i'm sure the vast 
> majority of the time, they are "mere" *arrays* not matrices where we are 
> doing matrix arithmetic.  probably most other users of MATLAB use it for 
> general math use and matrix math is used, maybe, 30% of the time.

(snip)

-- glen