There is not much of a rationale... It's just a little personally preference of mine:
I use [x, y] to denote a "closed interval" (i.e. set of all real numbers z, x <= z <= y),
whereas you talk about a finite set (not closed, not dense). [You do, don't you?
Or do the procedures allow 3.4 as index to be rounded to 3?] In addition, I myself
stopped using the notation in standards and the like because in the past I managed
to confuse some of my colleagues with it (in particular some less mathemtically
inclined electrical and mechanical engineers); {a, ..., b} seems to be clear to anyone.
But, as I said, its a minor thing and the intention is clear anyhow.

----
Dr. Sebastian Egner
Senior Scientist Channel Coding & Modulation
Philips Research Laboratories
Prof. Holstlaan 4 (WDC 1-051, 1st floor, room 51)
5656 AA Eindhoven
The Netherlands
tel:       +31 40 27-43166
fax:      +31 40 27-44004
email: xxxxxx@philips.com








srfi-66xxxxxx@srfi.schemers.org

06-06-2005 15:09

       
        To:        Sebastian Egner/EHV/RESEARCH/xxxxxx@PHILIPS
        cc:        srfi-66@srfi.schemers.org
        Subject:        Re: Revision of SRFI 66 available

        Classification:        





I intend to follow all of your suggestions in the next revision except
one (modulo the naming issue), so I'll just follow up on that single issue:

Sebastian Egner <xxxxxx@philips.com> writes:

> 4. Notation "range [0, 255]" and "indices [source-start, source-start +
> n)":
> How about "{0, ..., 255}" and "{source-start, ..., source-start + n - 1}"?

The rationale for this isn't clear to me---[x, y] is standard high
school notation (at least in the US and Germany) for inclusive ranges,
similarly for [x, y), which is inclusive on the left-hand side, and
exclusive on the right-hand side.  I could probably be persuaded to
use inclusive intervals everywhere, but it isn't clear to me that this
would be an improvement.

--
Cheers =8-} Mike
Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla