Tutorial creates confusion about slices

[Antoon Pardon]

On 2007-04-23, Michael Bentley <michael at jedimindworks.com> wrote:
>
> On Apr 23, 2007, at 7:38 AM, Antoon Pardon wrote:
>
>> The following is part of the explanation on slices in the
>> tutorial:
>>
>> The best way to remember how slices work is to think of the indices as
>> pointing between characters, with the left edge of the first character
>> numbered 0. Then the right edge of the last character of a string of n
>> characters has index n, for example:
>>
>>   +---+---+---+---+---+
>>   | H | e | l | p | A |
>>   +---+---+---+---+---+
>>   0   1   2   3   4   5
>>  -5  -4  -3  -2  -1
>>
>> This is all very well with a simple slice like:
>>
>>   "HelpA"[2:4]    =>     "lp"
>>
>>
>> But it give the wrong idea when using the following extended slice:
>>
>>   "HelpA"[4:2:-1]   =>   "Ap"
>>
>> So this doesn't result in the reverse of the previous expression while
>> the explanation above suggest it does.
>>
>>
>> So I suggest to drop this.
>
> But 'drop' means to let or make (something) fall vertically...  :-)
>
> At that point in the tutorial, step values had not been discussed.   
> Just a bit lower down on the page you'll find a link to 'Sequence  
> Types' where you'll find an explanation of stepping you'll perhaps  
> find more satisfactory.

That is very well posible. The question: Even if we get a good
explanation later, do we want an explanation here that can cause
confusion. These things are not just read and then discarded.
Someone can already have read the whole tutorial and then come
back to this place. So at that point he knows about stepping
when he is reading this.


I suspect that if you give this explanation to someone and explain
that there is also a step parameter, chances are he will answer
correctly if you ask him, what he thinks the following will result
in:


  "This is an example line"[12:19:2]



If you ask him what the following will result in:

  "This is an example line"[19:12:-1]

Chances are he will give the wrong answer.