[fvold]

"It's an offset from the beginning. The first element is 0 slots from the beginning." is what I was taught. (Of course, it's more complicated than that, with pointer math etc etc, but that works as a general gist)

In the past, I've written roughly half a million lines of Lua. Arrays don't always start at 0. I've regularly shaken my fist at Lua and cursed it's wicked ways, but it's really damn useful in a lot of contexts.