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From: cmp8118@sys.uea.ac.uk (D.S. Cartwright)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: How Do You Pronounce "#define"?
Message-ID: <1043@sys.uea.ac.uk>
Date: 13 Dec 89 10:54:46 GMT
References: <69516@psuecl.bitnet>
Organization: UEA, Norwich, UK
Lines: 36

In some article or other, bpm@psuecl.bitnet (Brian Moquin) writes:

>How should one pronounce "#define"?
>Is it "pound define" or "number define"?
>And if it is "pound define", which one of you taught me to say the other?

                                                  @
 [... only he put a lot of blank lines in it ... {:^)]
                                                  @

Personally, I pronounce it 'Hash define', 'cos having been a living English
person for well over nineteen years now, I think of a 'pound' sign as something
looking vaguely like and E which I can't demonstrate to you all because the
terminal chucks out a # whenever I press the bloody pound-sign button !!!!!!

Basically, # means 'number' when combined with a number, e.g. #14 is read as
'Number 14'. Except of course in Chinese takeaways, where #14 is read as 'Egg
Foo Yung with Deep Fried Mushrooms and House Special Fried Rice'.

So call it whatever you want. Why not call it a Large Green Frog, that's got a 
ring to it, hasn't it ?? 

So remember ....

                 Large Green Frog include <stdio.h>

	Dave Cartwright,
	    School of Information Systems,
		University of East Anglia,
		    Norwich,
			ENGLAND.

{Large Green Frog include .sig}

Disclaimer : I speak for myself; if anyone else agrees with me, they must be a
             bit soft in the head and should form a club to celebrate the fact