
Ask HN: [0] or [1] for First Ref? - sbr464
I see both, was curious which is correct.
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ktpsns
Latex/Bibtex/natbib generates [1]. Actually I never have seen a tool starting
with [0].

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sbr464
I agree, but people frequently submit with [0] so wanted to ask. Here’s an
example from today:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22316070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22316070)

~~~
archi42
I suppose the average HN commentator is used to indexing arrays using the
postfix []-operator, thus starting at 0, while the tools mentioned by GP are
aimed at everyone - and most "normal" people start counting at 1.

For references in manually written text, it doesn't matter at all - as opposed
to programming language design. E.g. in C the equality x[a] == <star>(x + a)
holds because we start at 0.

OTOH if we started at 1, it would become x[a] == <star>(x + a - 1).
Mathematically it does not really matter as well, but if you're doing lots of
pointer arithmetics in C, causing massive bugs by forgetting a crucial " \- 1"
might be all too easy. No idea if this was inherited from predecessors or an
original design decision. Might also be just a coincidence and the reason to
start at [0] is an entirely different one ;-)

(sorry for the <star>, I mean * -- but using multiple of these is interpreted
as formatting/italics and I don't know how to avoid this)

