Indexes start at Zero

Experience has shown that indexing arrays starting at zero works best. The first element of an array is at a displacement of zero from the beginning of the array. To move through an array start the index at zero and increment it by the element size to move to the next element.

Here is a program fragment that adds up all the bytes in the array:

        li    $v1,0              # zero the sum
        li    $t1,0              # init index to 0
        li    $t2,0              # init loop counter
        
for:    beq   $t2,5,endfor       # for ( i=0; i < 5 ;i++ )
        lb    $v0,data($t1)
        addu  $v1,$v1,$v0        #     sum = sum+data[i]
        addi  $t1,$t1,1          #     increment index
        addi  $t2,$t2,1          #     increment counter
        b     for

endfor: 
        . . . 
      
data: .byte  6,34,12,-32, 90