Proper terminology, should I say indexes or indices?

indexing terminology indices
Raj More picture Raj More · Sep 4, 2009 · Viewed 16k times · Source

I had a question about indices on a table and I put it up on Stack Overflow. I got my answer, but someone changed the word indices to say indexes.

We know that the plural of Index is Indices, but we also know that almost everybody prefers the "wrong" word.

What are some other "wrong" terms like this that really shouldn't be, but are overtaking their "correct" counterparts?

Answer

APC picture APC · Sep 4, 2009

"Indices" is the mathematical formulation whereas in publishing they use "indexes" (which is probably why so many people in IT consider "indices" to be more correct than "indexes").

I think that a table index is analogous to an index in a book rather than an exponent in maths, so the publishing variant is the appropriate plural to use in this context.

Furthermore, at least in Oracle, the data dictionary views are called DBA_INDEXES, ALL_INDEXES and USER_INDEXES. It is usually a good idea to employ the same terminology which the domain uses.

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