> how about s[i - 1..n]? > > You going to go throw some ifs around the statement that uses that? Use > a ternary if? So I'm forced to use a longer more verbose method, and > also introduce bugs, because the most obvious, simplest, and logical > solution, s[max(0, i-1)..n] won't work. -1 as index is illegal anyways, so this code will fail even with signed indices