<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV><DIV>On 10 Feb 2006, at 12:45, Nick Coghlan wrote:</DIV><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="4" style="font: 14.0px Helvetica">An alternative would be to call it "__discrete__", as that is the key<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="4" style="font: 14.0px Helvetica">characteristic of an indexing type - it consists of a sequence of discrete<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="4" style="font: 14.0px Helvetica">values that can be isomorphically mapped to the integers.</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><DIV>Another alternative: __as_ordinal__. Wikipedia describes ordinals as "numbers used to denote the position in an ordered sequence" which seems a pretty precise description of the intended result. The "as_" prefix also captures the idea that this should be a lossless conversion.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Mark Russell</DIV></BODY></HTML>