No, it's the other way around; i, j, ... have a long history in mathematics as indices for matrices, summations, etc., with m, n likewise being traditional for the dimensions of a matrix.
In early FORTRAN, integers were present primarily to be used as array subscripts. The INteger mnemonic doesn't appear in any of the early papers or manuals.
As a side note, on the topic of features that would currently seem ‘strange’, some early languages that were intended to be programmed using teletypewriters rather than FORTRAN's Hollerith cards used half-line motions to write array subscripts as actual subscripts.
Comments
Fun fact, this is also the reason why 'i' is commonly used as a name for the loop counter variable.
No, it's the other way around; i, j, ... have a long history in mathematics as indices for matrices, summations, etc., with m, n likewise being traditional for the dimensions of a matrix.
In early FORTRAN, integers were present primarily to be used as array subscripts. The INteger mnemonic doesn't appear in any of the early papers or manuals.
As a side note, on the topic of features that would currently seem ‘strange’, some early languages that were intended to be programmed using teletypewriters rather than FORTRAN's Hollerith cards used half-line motions to write array subscripts as actual subscripts.
What about as an abbreviation for "index"?
Source?
I mean google around. It's not "it's definitely from Fortran" more like "it has been repeatedly suggested that...".