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From: hansm@cs.kun.nl (Hans Mulder)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer
Subject: Re: Symbol pronunciation (Re: awk comments)
Keywords: awk #
Message-ID: <3498@wn1.sci.kun.nl>
Date: 1 May 91 22:22:54 GMT
References: <6188@flint4.UUCP> <751@uswnvg.UUCP> <3896@dali> <1991Apr30.085700.10664@grep.co.uk>
Sender: news@sci.kun.nl
Organization: University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
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In <1991Apr30.085700.10664@grep.co.uk> vic@grep.co.uk (Victor Gavin) writes:

>This hasn't been mentioned for a while so thought I'd resurrect it.

>The # has several ``names''. Octothorpe, pound, mesh, hash are just a few.

>Octothorpe was invented by AT&T so we can ignore that.

By extension '=' may be called "quadrathorpe" and '-' is a "bithorpe".
Monothorpes are also theoretically possible, but so far none have been
observed in the comp.sci lab :-).

>Pound is an Americanism, which doesn't exist anywhere else. For
>example in the UK, if you mentioned a pound sign, people would expect
>that you meant the UK currency symbol (a fancy L with a dash through
>it).

Actually, in the British variant of ASCII the symbol in position 043
looks just like that.  They pronounce it "pound", obviously.

Shell scripts, C source etc. looks rather funny on such equipment,
except to Brits.  They're used to it.

>Mesh is a silly invention, used in the same vein as rabbit ears for
>double quotes (").

That vein is called INTERCAL.

>The only name for # that most everyone understands is hash -- or then
>again maybe it depends on how you were brought up :-)

Now there's an Americanism.

The most widely recognised name is "sharp" (from music).
Second is "number sign", although that is also an Amercanism.

>The naming of symbols is probably a religious issue (like the
>pronunciation of char: is it the base of the word `character' or
>is it like the word char, as in lightly burn a something).

Agreed.

>		vic
>--

Hans Mulder	hansm@cs.kun.nl