Where does the i come from?

[toRch]

Hello.
Well the name for the counting variable in a for-loop almost everytime is "i".
Everyone's using it. Tho other variables work, too.
Does anyone know WHY? Perhaps because it is/was taking less memory in program languages?
The history of it would be interesting(I guess).
Sorry, I didn't find a proper category for this thread.

[bja888]

"i" is short for intager.

So the single "i" is used for the most temporary of integers.


... at least thats what I always thought.

[mar77a]

That's like asking why are foo bar and baz metasyntactic variables hehe.

[Clawbug]

wtf are foo and bar anyway? Where do they come from?

[Kavukamari]

it is clearly stated in EnEcSe's help doc that:

foo
bar
is
for
noobs

but if you want the wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasyntactic_variables



OU812?



I sometimes use b for bytes, and I use j if I need another array number (I usually capitalize B if I capitalize the word "byte" in the rest of the script, just a habit...)

I just use i because everybody else does, so it's easiest to pick up...

[chrisgbk]

I use "i" as short for "index", as array access is typically common usage for such a variable. This is also in line with it's usage in mathematics; ie: Capital-Sigma notation for summation, which uses i, m, and n to represent the index of summation, lower bound, and upper bound respectively.

Note that as far as programming goes, a simple loop should be the only acceptable place that you use a single letter variable for; it's bad programming practice to use single letter variables anywhere else. There is no runtime cost overhead for using descriptive variable names.

[Radical Terrorist]

You folk must be some of them there computer-geniuses.

I almost wish I had given up science and Law for some Computer stuff.

[rfreak]

Radical Terrorist
 
why not do Science Law and computer? That's what I'm doing