programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
As programmers, we deal with a lot of unusual keyboard characters that typical users rarely need to type, much less think about:
$ # % {} * [] ~ & <>
Even the characters that are fairly regularly used in everyday writing -- such as the humble dash, parens, period, and question mark -- have radically different meaning in programming languages.
This is all well and good, but you'll eventually have to read code out loud to another developer for some reason. And then you're in an awkward position, indeed.
How do you pronounce these unusual ASCII characters?
We all do it, but we don't necessarily think much about the words we choose. I certainly hadn't thought much about this until yesterday, when I read the following comment left on Exploring Wide Finder:
A friend sent me a Java code fragment in which he looped through printing "Thank You!" a million times (it was a response to a professor who had extended the deadline on a paper). I responded with a single line of Ruby to do the same, and a single line of Lisp.He wrote back: "Underscores, pipes, octothorpes, curly braces -- sheesh... I'll take a mild dose of verbosity if means I don't have to code something that looks like it's been zipped already!"
What the heck is an octothorpe? I know this as the pound key, but that turns out to be a US-centric word; most other cultures know it as the hash key.
I'm often surprised to hear what other programmers name their ASCII characters. Not that the words I personally use to identify my ASCII characters are any more correct, but there's far more variability than you'd expect considering the rigid, highly literal mindset of most programmers.
Perhaps that's why I was so excited to discover the ASCII entry in The New Hacker's Dictionary, which Phil Glockner turned me on to. It's a fairly exhaustive catalog of the common names, rare names, and occasionally downright weird names that programmers associate with the ASCII characters sprinkled throughout their code.
How many of these ASCII pronunciations do you recognize? Which ones are the "correct" ones in your shop?
| Common Names | Rare Names | |||||
| ! |
exclamation mark bang pling excl not shriek |
|
||||
| " |
quotation marks quote double quote |
|
||||
| # |
|
|
||||
| $ |
dollar sign dollar |
|
||||
| % |
percent sign mod grapes |
double-oh-seven | ||||
| & |
ampersand amp amper and and sign |
address reference andpersand bitand background pretzel |
||||
| ' |
apostrophe single quote quote |
|
||||
| ( ) |
opening / closing parenthesis left / right paren left / right parenthesis left / right open / close open / close paren paren / thesis |
so/already lparen/rparen opening/closing parenthesis opening/closing round bracket left/right round bracket wax/wane parenthisey/unparenthisey left/right ear |
||||
| [ ] |
opening / closing bracket left / right bracket left / right square bracket bracket / unbracket |
square / unsquare u turn / u turn back |
||||
| { } |
opening / closing brace open / close brace left / right brace left / right squiggly left / right squiggly bracket/brace left / right curly bracket/brace |
brace / unbrace curly / uncurly leftit / rytit left / right squirrelly embrace / bracelet |
||||
| < > |
less / greater than bra / ket left / right angle left / right angle bracket left / right broket |
from / into (or towards) read from / write to suck / blow comes-from / gozinta in / out crunch / zap tic / tac angle / right angle |
||||
| * |
asterisk star splat |
|
||||
| + |
plus add |
cross intersection |
||||
| , | comma |
cedilla tail |
||||
| - |
dash hyphen minus |
worm option dak bithorpe |
||||
| . |
period dot point decimal point |
radix point full stop spot |
||||
| / |
slash stroke slant forward slash |
diagonal solidus over slak virgule slat |
||||
| \ |
|
bash reverse slant reversed virgule backslat |
||||
| : | colon |
dots two-spot |
||||
| ; |
semicolon semi |
weenie hybrid pit-thwong |
||||
| = |
equals gets takes |
quadrathorpe half-mesh |
||||
| ? |
question mark query ques |
|
||||
| @ |
at sign at strudel |
|
||||
| ^ |
circumflex caret hat control uparrow |
xor sign chevron shark (or shark-fin) to the fang pointer |
||||
| _ |
underline underscore underbar under |
score backarrow skid flatworm |
||||
| ` |
grave accent backquote left quote left single quote open quote grave |
|
||||
| | |
bar or or-bar v-bar pipe vertical bar |
vertical line gozinta thru pipesinta spike |
||||
| ~ |
tilde squiggle twiddle not |
approx wiggle swung dash enyay sqiggle (sic) |
If you're curious about the derivation of some of the odder names here, there are an extensive set of footnotes (and even more possible pronunciations) at the ascii-table.com pronunciation guide.
So the next time a programmer walks up to you and says, "oh, it's easy! Just type wax bang at hash buck grapes circumflex and splat wane", you'll know what they mean.
Maybe.
Hopefully this won't mess up the characters... The first two are the less than and greater than, sometimes referred to as "waka".
An ASCII poem:
!*''#
^"`$$-
!*=@$_
%* ~#4
[]../
|{,,SYSTEM HALTED
The poem can only be appreciated by reading it aloud, to wit:
Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.
-matt
Matt Newby on June 12, 2008 7:55 AMI personally pronounce the * as "pointer" when this is its intended meaning, e.g., "int *x" becomes "int-pointer x". x is, after all, a pointer to an int.
Thomas on June 12, 2008 7:56 AMAwesome post. Really made me wonder what I say for each, and more often than not, it was the bold term.
Benjamin M. Strozykowski on June 12, 2008 7:59 AM\/ are called Obliques too (well... according to a scottish collegue)
AlexK on June 12, 2008 8:01 AMMy C++ teacher invented the pronunciation of 'row for = which is also how I pronounce the php - since they're basically the same, you just need to know what I'm talking about to know what I'm talking about....
also for php, the $ is silent in a variable name. Though in Perl you probably should pronounce it--or just never explain Perl to begin with.
Andy Fundinger on June 12, 2008 8:02 AMTo be fair, it's relatively rare that you have to read source code "letter by letter" to someone. As someone above mentioned, if you say "if a equals b" everyone you would possibly say it to would know that it's supposed to mean "if (a == b)".
In the few instances of having to dictate a shell script to your mom over the phone, I find it helpful to say "that key left of the 1 key" :)
J. Stoever on June 12, 2008 8:02 AMquote:
So the next time a programmer walks up to you and says, "oh, it's easy! Just type wax bang at hash buck grapes circumflex and splat wane", you'll know what they mean.
Sounds like a PERL program.
Leonel on June 12, 2008 8:02 AMI think I'm the only one who actually decoded "wax bang at hash buck grapes circumflex and splat wane":
(!@$%^*)
DallonF on June 12, 2008 8:05 AMAgain, it depends heavily on the context.
I've come around to "paren" and "brace" over "bracket" and "curly bracket" (though it's still "square bracket" for me) as they're easier to say, despite not being terribly British. I'm also slightly disheartened to discover we Britains aren't meant to say period either, aaah well.
I find I need to find ways of "reading code" perhaps a little more than most because I find I think best when walking, so I think a lot about code while not at a computer. It rarely comes down to naming symbols though, unless I'm thinking up a new syntax.
As for reading C# lambdas, for something of the form "x = somecode" I read as "given x, somecode" or if you want to be more expressive "given x execute/perform/become somecode". I've also heard "lambda of x is somecode" which makes it's role as a form of anonymous function explicit, though one could argue technically it's incorrect. I do remember people on the C# team mentioning how they read it somewhere, but I can't find it now. Most likely on Channel9.
[ICR] on June 12, 2008 8:05 AM"Martin said: "The symbol wich gives me mmore headaches is the ~ symbol, mostly because no one uses it ever..."
You must not be an embedded designer."
Or a game player. Tilde is used to bring down the console in Quake based games and many others. It causes a lot of headaches when it's not internationalized properly and on my english keyboard I have to press Shift+# instead of `.
[ICR] on June 12, 2008 8:10 AMActually "cedilla" is only used in french and is much different than a comma. Cedilla is the little tail that is added to 'C' in this character : ''
In french, comma is 'virgule' and cedilla is 'cdille'.
OlivierP on June 12, 2008 8:10 AMThe funniest ones i heard recently was someone referred to a : (colon) as a "double dot" and an apostrophe (') as an "up comma" - you couldn't make it up! :-)
Phil on June 12, 2008 8:14 AMTechnically, a sharp sign has two strictly vertical lines and two crossing horizontal lines that rise slightly from left to right. It predates the typewriter symbols by a few centuries.
In casual conversation, the symbol on the keyboard is pretty close, but you wouldn't want to do something like ... mistake the hash for the sharp symbol when naming your programming language.
#9839; #
Will on June 12, 2008 8:17 AMBtw,
In Deutsch ist ein "-" bitte ein Bindestrich und kein Minus!
@DallonF: No, I did it too. You were just the first to post a comment on it. ;)
"!@#$%^*? That's amazing! I use the same combination on my luggage!"
mbhunter on June 12, 2008 8:22 AMThe = is really difficult - just yesterday I tried to tell a colleague some C++ stuff and didn't know how to call this. Explaining it with "derefencing" seems to be the least bad way...
Btw. for single chars there's the "ascii" command line tool (http://www.catb.org/~esr/ascii/). And I now noticed that it will even give correct albeit verbose results if you run "
ascii wax bang at hash buck grapes circumflex and splat wane" on command line :-D
What, no "wave" for tilde? I must be extra-rare...
sapphirecat on June 12, 2008 8:24 AMWhen I was in first year I had a C++ professor who had a background in typography. And one day he just went off on a tangent and said "Oh, by the way, you'll never be able to guess what '#' is actually called." Ever since then, I've been using the word "octothorpe" to irritate my friends.
Skrud on June 12, 2008 8:25 AM"I think it's more standard to call it "sharp" than people think, as I've always heard the first 2 characters of the first line of a *nix shell script (#!/usr/bin/bash or whatever) referred to as "sh'bang".
That's funny, I never thought of that in terms of the word sharp. The first perl book I ever read called it a hash-bang, and said that it could be shortened to sh'bang -- the sh deriving from the end of 'hash.'
I guess it works for either.
Neil on June 12, 2008 8:28 AMHere in Brazil we pronounce "#" as "lasagna".
Tiago S. on June 12, 2008 8:29 AMThanks!
One of the most useful blog posts I have seen in awhile. The most often misused/misunderstood here at my work: slash/backslash and brackets braces.
~Lee
Lee Brandt on June 12, 2008 8:33 AMJulian: Bindestrich is way too long; Minus is much more efficient to say. And the computer doesn't distinguish that anyway (it's always ASCII 0x2d).
[ICR]: Tilde is also bad on certain german keyboard layouts, where you have to press AltGr+~ and then Space. Really annoying for a "quick" /donate 100 on the console...
For me:
'' are "of"
'std::vectorint' is pronounced "stid vector of int"
'[]' are "sub"
'array[i]' is pronounced "array sub i"
'@' is pronounced "AT" with more emphasis than if you has just written 'at'
'#!/bin/bash' is "hash bang bin bash" also called "drum-set falling down stairs"
- somehow became tack when I first encountered it (vice dak I suppose).
You know: net use wack wack server wack share tack 1 space slash user colon company dot com wack steve
I also learned #! as sh'bang.
SteveJ on June 12, 2008 8:42 AM" - inverted commas
- left quack
- right quack
- quack quack!
I'm surprised to see "strudel" on the list for @. I've only heard it in Hebrew. Are the names listed in any particular order? I wonder how much an effect Hebrew speakers have on programming. For example, the name for "::" in one dialect of PHP: Paamayim Nekudotayim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paamayim_Nekudotayim)
Nathan Fellman on June 12, 2008 8:47 AMI've been calling %= this thing % a "butterfly tag" (squint at the percent sign), but I really only do it to annoy my co-workers at this point.
Matt on June 12, 2008 8:47 AMIn Malaysia, @ is also "read" as "alias".. I still don't know why..
How do you folks read this btw: =
astigmatik on June 12, 2008 8:49 AMargh.. that should have been =
astigmatik on June 12, 2008 8:49 AM@ sign has some really funny names around the world. For example in Poland we call it a monkey (ma#322;pa).
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/At_sign/id/304590
Calling '#' for hash may be confusing if you're also dealing with hash maps or hashing algorithms... ;) (In Norway we just call it 'square'.)
'' is also called 'et' (from Latin/French).
Regarding 'qoutation marks', that also quickly gets wrong in Norwegian, since we often use and (they don't have ASCII chars) to quite stuff. Usually we just say single and double quotes for ' and ", but a lot of people confuse ' and `, which can be dangerous if you're ever doing anything in a *nix shell.
BTW: Trying to pronounce obscure variable and function names can also be quite entertaining.
Sign Swedish (direct english translation if available)
' fnutt
" dubbelfnutt (double fnutt)
{ } vnster/hger msvinge (left/right seagull)
# brdgrd (lumber yard)
Great topic!
Ruby's comparator method = is sometimes called the spaceship because it looks like a UFO! Also, I've heard the = operator called the hash rocket because it's used to assign values to hash keys and looks like a rocket. I can't understand why most of you folks don't seem to like Ruby...
John Topley on June 12, 2008 8:58 AMSo the next time a programmer walks up to you and says, "oh, it's easy! Just type wax bang at hash buck grapes circumflex and splat wane", you'll know what they mean.
Yes. They mean "I'm a poser who thinks using obsolescent vocab words from the Jargon File makes me leet."
(*Reading* the jargon file is fascinating and educational. *Emulating* it, not so much.)
Dan on June 12, 2008 8:58 AMWhen I worked for a software company that had telco customers, ! was bang, * was splat, and # was either pound or octothorpe. I still like hearing bang for !, but I never got used to splat for *.
Jim on June 12, 2008 9:01 AM# python -c "print 'Thankyou' * int(1e6)"
Funny stuff in Spanish.
@ is "arroba" which is equivalent to 25 pounds (12.5kg)
$ is "pesos" because I'm in Colombia we have here the COP (Colombian Peso)
[] is "corchetes" from the french "crochet" which is some kind of hook.
{} is "llaves" which literally means keys.
^ I call this "sombrerito" which means little hat.
_ is "barra al piso" this sounds kinda funny.
~ I call this "virgulilla" some people call this "gusanito" which means little worm.
AndresVia on June 12, 2008 9:02 AMHow do you guys read out loud lambda expressions such as "t = t.Name"
Using the phrase "goes to", as in "t goes to t.Name".
jalbert on June 12, 2008 9:03 AMI have heard, and I do call, the * a kleene star...
stetic on June 12, 2008 9:04 AMYou left out the all-important "broken-bar" on UK keyboards, a real tragedy of a character for US developers, especially when it is used as a string delimiter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_bar
Jonathan on June 12, 2008 9:06 AM/ uphill \ downhill
Name on June 12, 2008 9:07 AM/ divide(d( by))
Name on June 12, 2008 9:09 AMConflating hyphens and dashes really bothers me. There are very few true dashes in programming contexts. They're mostly hyphens and subtraction operators.
But I'm a writer in addition to a programmer, so I need to keep these concepts distinct.
I've recently been trying to figure out which ASCII symbol is most overloaded. It's either ' or -.
Adrian on June 12, 2008 9:09 AMI remember "@" being called pig-tail early in my experience as a touch-typist.
I also know of "" being pronounced "lambda" because it was the available printer character for that (leading to the name Pound-Sterling-calculus).
The same functional programming Brits also enjoyed referring to bras and kets. That is, "(" is a bra, ")" is its ket. Don't recall how (, [, and [ were differentiated.
\ downright
\ upleft
/ downleft
/ upright
I once had an IT instructor from the South who read "*" as "spuh-LAY-it".
Chris on June 12, 2008 9:11 AMReminds me of the Victor Borge 'Phonetic punctuation' sketch, in which he reads a story with all the commas, fullstops, dashes, etc pronounced...
Anyone else here old enough to remember that?
I work for a multinational company, so I believe it's important to use terms understood by everyone, and also not to refer to keyboard positions.
As a multilingual programmer, I also prefer the language-neutral terms rather than 'pointer', 'not', etc.
DavidR on June 12, 2008 9:17 AMyeh i go with back tick for `
and whack for /
and when thinking in XML, for "", "" and "/" I use "blond", "brunette", "redhead".
Aren't "french quotes" those little chevron like characters correctly called Guillemets (or sometimes 'duck feet').
They're used in ML and F# for quoting code.
I find it interesting that there are so many different names for the same symbols. I'll definitely be paying closer attention to which terms the people around me are using. =]
Ari Patrick on June 12, 2008 9:25 AMHello!
Why isn't it possible anymore to enter characters
by pressing "Alt GR" and the numeric ASCII code into
the numpad?
Was that a feature of good old MS-DOS or of old keyboards?
So instead of saying "backslash" you say "Alt-GR 134" (octal)
or "Alt-Gr 92" (decimal).
(Can anyone remember if this system was decimal
or octal based?).
Erik
Erik on June 12, 2008 9:26 AMWOW! The splat ("*")...
I was sure close.
When I cut my eye-teeth on a teletype terminal, I called it SPLOT.
...that's what it sounded like to me :-)
I just use the ASCII values instead of names. Saves time and reduces ambiguity. Doesn't everybody do that? :p
Derek on June 12, 2008 9:34 AMInspiring. I will now only refer to quotes as "dirks". :) (Two spot - wane)
Mark on June 12, 2008 9:35 AMMy colleagues use "drop" for \ and /. I soooo hate that :)
Erik: it still works, with both Alt keys (well, not in some keyboard layouts). And it's decimal.
Rytis on June 12, 2008 9:37 AMGood topic. And fundamental to communicating programming syntax.
In conversations, we were always mixing up - [] {}. We came to this resolution: brackets have hard corners [], thus the hard "k" sound. Braces have round corners {}, thus the soft sound.
Although, that doesn't seem to be the end of it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket
I thought the math/engineering discipline would help, but at www.wolfram.com (makers of Mathematica):
"The rules for using brackets are just as simple. Arguments to Mathematica functions are always enclosed in square brackets [ ]. Lists, matrices, and arrays are always enclosed in curly brackets { }. Matrices and arrays are implemented simply as lists of lists."
Although the Open Standards Group glossary at
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7990989775/xbd/glossary.html:
braces::
The characters "{" (left brace) and "}" (right brace), also known as curly braces. When used in the phrase "enclosed in (curly) braces" the symbol "{" immediately precedes the object to be enclosed, and "}" immediately follows it. When describing these characters in the portable character set, the names left-brace and right-brace are used.
brackets::
The characters "[" (left-bracket) and "]" (right-bracket), also known as square brackets. When used in the phrase "enclosed in (square) brackets" the symbol "[" immediately precedes the object to be enclosed, and "]" immediately follows it. When describing these characters in the portable character set, the names left-square-bracket and right-square-bracket are used.
I've usually heard the accent grave ` mark pronounced "thorn".
MattS on June 12, 2008 9:40 AM"Pound Bang User Bin Bash."
"Whack Whack Host Whack Share Whack Folder Whack Program Dot Bat."
In the office, I sometimes get strange looks from passers by when talking with my fellows.
~ is clearly a cornflake, that's what I always call it!
The "@" sign is sometimes called "monkey tail" ("coada de maimuta") in Romanian.
Cristian on June 12, 2008 9:55 AMin mexico we call
# = "gato" like cat its the same as tic-tac-toe,
@ = arroba
* = asterisco
$ = pesos
M$ = u know
| = pipe
~ = tilde
Tis one i dont know ^, i call it the "techo" (cieling) like in a house
At work we use Ruby, and we have weekly code reviews. Usually, the line of code is spoken, for example:
if foo.exists?
instead of saying "if foo dot exists question mark" we read it like you would read a sentence, raising the tone at the end of "exists" -- like asking a questsion.
Of course, we need to drag out exists to exiiiiiists and shift the tone up an octave or two ;)
Tom on June 12, 2008 10:00 AM@Jeff:
"Oh man, I don't even want to go there -- there have to be completely different rules for multiple character ASCII sets."
You _have_ to go there, if you're talking about reading code aloud.
In a C++ context, I've heard "link" for -, and "sub" for ::.
"Gozinta" for the pipe character is a new one to me. A former colleague who cut his teeth on Delphi, though, said that when reading assignment expressions aloud---backwards:
a = a + b;
became "a plus b gozinta a" (but, confusingly,
a += b;
became "a plus equals b").
Are you going to tackle the correct pronunciation of "char" next?
Alex Chamberlain on June 12, 2008 10:00 AM"circumflex"?
Though I haven't been a native French speaker for 30 years, I would swear we called that (essential) part of French writing the "circonflex".
Perhaps someone is confusing it with circumcision.
Yves on June 12, 2008 10:03 AMIn Spain # is frequently called 'almohadilla' which could be translated as pad, cushion or small pillow.
Venkman on June 12, 2008 10:06 AMIn Argentina we share most of the pronounciations as written by the Colombian guy, except:
_ : guin bajo, or simply "underscore"
~ : tilde or "uflo", also "viborita" (little snake)
Others:
# : Numeral
% : Porciento / porcentaje
* : asterisco
+ : (signo) ms
- : (signo) menos / guin
| : barra vertical, or "pipe"
" : comillas / comilla doble
' : apstrofe / comilla simple
/ : barra
\ : contrabarra
: menor, mayor
My personal favorite for @ is 'amphora', pinned to a 16th century Italian merchant (if I'm remembering the possibly-apocryphal story right) who used the symbol as a short hand for ledgering up goods by unit volume -- which seems to line up nicely with the Spanish "arroba" folks have mentioned already.
Josh Millard on June 12, 2008 10:08 AMIn Turkish:
$ dolar (dollar)
# sharp, numara (number), kare (square)
% yzde (percent)
() parantez (paranthesis)
{} k#305;v#305;rc#305;k parantez (curly paranthesis)
* y#305;ld#305;z (star), arp#305; (multiply)
[] k#351;eli parantez (paranthesis with corners)
~ tilda, tilde
ve (and)
kk/byk (small/big), kktr/byktr(is smaller/is bigger)
= ise (if. Word order in Turkish is not like 'if a, b' but 'a if b' so it fits perfectly)
' tek t#305;rnak (single quote)
" ift t#305;rnak (double quote)
/ bl (is divided by)
\ ters bl (reverse is divided by)
1000000.times {puts "thank you!"}
(dotimes (i 1000000) (write-line "thank you!"))
Why are you using "underscores, pipes, octothorpes, curly braces" for such a simple task? Your friend is right to question you! :-)
iThe symbol wich gives me mmore headaches is the ~ symbol, mostly because no one uses it ever ... The easiest way I found to explain it is by using the word "oflo", which a fellow programmer invented:/i
You don't have to invent a name for it '~' has a name - tilde.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde
Must not spend a lot of time in shell ...
Brian on June 12, 2008 10:30 AMLuc M
- I like the suck and blow symbols...
- Does really someone use these pronunciation?
Yes, for harmonica notation (you get different notes from the same hole depending which you do)
Also, there must be a right single quote if there's a left one, surely?
Jim Cooper on June 12, 2008 10:32 AMIn America there is no "common name" for the . We simply never have to describe that symbol. Occasionally it may be useful to express a price in British pounds, but you don't need to name the symbol for that, you just refer to the money in a normal casual way. ("Amazon dot co dot yoo-kay has that for fifty pounds. That works out to approximately a million dollars.")
On the very rare occasions when I do need to describe that symbol, there's no need for a short, quick way to say it, so I just describe it fully : "The symbol for the British Pound"
(By the way, I'm not defending our crazy habit of calling "#" "pound". I'm just answering PJH's question. )
AndyL on June 12, 2008 10:33 AMM'colleague Maf decided that [0]- (used to double-dereference inline in C on the Mac, when we had Handles) was pronounced 'sprong' - an excellent idea.
A Handle is a pointer to a pointer, used so that memory could be reallocated before we had MMU's - if you have nested data structures in Handles, sprong is much clearer than the alternatives GetMainDevice()[0]- gdPMap[0]- pixelSize instead of (** (** GetMainDevice() ).gdPMap ).pixelSize
The subject of pronouncing = in lambda expressions came up on Eric Lippert's blog a little while ago:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ericlippert/archive/2008/05/16/reading-code-over-the-telephone.aspx
He suggests "goes to" and mentions "becomes" or "such that" as alternatives. Personally, I use "goes to", but there are some other interesting possibilities in the comments there.
Interesting topic. Pronunciation is one of those invisible things, you don't really notice the way you pronounce something until someone you're talking to doesn't know what you're talking about.
sandstone on June 12, 2008 10:35 AMI say "paren-paren" for ()
Brian on June 12, 2008 10:48 AMHeh, in portuguese we call @ "arroba" which is a weight measure used for livestock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arroba
Hoffmann on June 12, 2008 10:52 AMThe | character has a special name for its use in logic, the "Sheffer stroke" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffer_stroke ), where it represents what would normally be called NAND (confusingly, in C-family languages, | tends to mean OR).
Matthew L. on June 12, 2008 10:56 AMSome other language (Haskell) specific pronunciations would be :: read as "has type" and - read as "to" ..
map :: (a - b) - [a] - [b]
This is usually pronounced "map has type, function from a to b, to list of a to list of b".
Of course, I wonder why nobody has suggested the language-agnostic "[right] arrow", "[right] double-arrow", "left arrow", "left double-arrow" for -, =, -, = respectively.
Kyle S on June 12, 2008 10:57 AMI started a Google Document for the localization of these pronounciation rules, and added the Dutch language:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pRrnmp1WXt-faAxKFXex9FQhl=en
I was aghast at the lack of "store" for "!". But on the extended version in the link it is present.
Daniel on June 12, 2008 11:11 AMIn the Netherlands @ used to be 'apenstaartje' which i guess in English would be monkeytale. But since email has become common, more and more people use the English 'at'.
^ is a 'dakje', a roof.
Oh yeah, and # is a 'hekje' here, a fence. You know, b'cos it really looks like the fence of your front garden...
The '-je' at the end of each word means that the thing you describe is small. So actually it's small monkeytale, small roof and small fence.
alwinuz on June 12, 2008 11:19 AMGreat post Jeff - really.
This should almost be mandatory reading for development teams.
James Skemp on June 12, 2008 11:19 AMThis can't be a serious post. It can't be...
Codewiz51 on June 12, 2008 11:24 AM(!@$%^*)
Nope, still seems like gibberish to me.
Ryan North (http://qwantz.com/archive/001239.html) says $ sounds like the sound dogs make when they're just about to throw up.
$$$$$
Jacob on June 12, 2008 11:27 AMLet me put a more complete spanish translation, we also have this problem between spanish developers.
! Signo de Admiracion
" Comillas
# (every body call it "Signo de gato" or "cat sign")
$ Signo de Peso
% Porcentaje
Et ("a lot of person thinks it's Amperson")
' Apostrofe
() Parentesis
[] Corchetes
{} Llaves
Manor que, Mayor que (Not so sure)
* Asterisco
+ Signo de ms (not so sure)
, Coma
- Guion
. Punto
/ Diagonal
\ Contra Diagonal
: Dos Puntos
; Punto y coma
= Signo de igual
? Signo de Interrogacin
@ Arroba
^ Acento circunflejo
_ Guion Bajo
` (I didn't find this but for sure starts with "Acento" someting)
| Barra
~ Tilde
I hope this is userful to somebody
Proteo5 on June 12, 2008 11:28 AMI always refer to the ampersand as the cheerio sign, seriously
upper left corner of pic
http://www.lotn.org/~calkinsc/coins/cheerios_front_150.jpg
circumflex....?
Vinny on June 12, 2008 11:36 AMTiago S.:
Here in Brazil we pronounce "#" as "lasagna".
Sorry, but where in Brazil do people pronounce it like that? I've always seen "cerquilha" (little fence?) or "sustenido" (sharp) or "jogo da velha" (tic-tac-toe).
Wilerson on June 12, 2008 11:37 AMHurrah for Strudel! There's a whole wikipaedia article about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign
When I see a $ in code I refer to it as String. In BASIC, Text$ was a string variable. So over time I started calling it the "string" character. I still get a lot of weird looks because of that. I generally catch myself right after I've said it though.
Doug on June 12, 2008 11:42 AMI've used "Whack" to specify the "\" key to fellow geeks, all I get is blank stares back, I'm assuming it's an age thing also since I'm senior to them (8 years) which is like grandpa to grandson in computer years right?
Scott on June 12, 2008 11:45 AM # A corridor, or iron bars, or a tree, or possibly a kitchen
sink (if your dungeon has sinks), or a drawbridge.
Stairs down: a way to the next level.
Stairs up: a way to the previous level.
@ You (usually), or another human.
) A weapon of some sort.
[ A suit or piece of armor.
% Something edible (not necessarily healthy).
! A potion.
( Some other useful object (pick-axe, key, lamp...)
$ A pile of gold.
* A gem or rock (possibly valuable, possibly worthless).
^ A trap (once you detect it).
" An amulet, or a spider web.
_ An altar, or an iron chain.
{ A fountain.
} A pool of water or moat or a pool of lava.
In German @ is "Affenschwanz" or monkeytail.
Twist on June 12, 2008 11:49 AMThe nice thing about using the terms "hash" and "bang" is that they are composable into "'shebang", as in the common
#!/usr/bin/ruby
idiom.
Frank on June 12, 2008 11:50 AMOne thing I noticed when I started exploring the Unix/Open Source world as a young programmer was that they had WAY better names for these characters (and by better, I mean easier to say; but also usually more fun to say) than I had ever been introduced to at my defense contractor job. It's so much easier to say "bang" than "exclamation point".
Some of the names for operators are fun too:
= (order comparison): "Spaceship"
= (in Ruby): "Hashrocket"
Whoops, the filter ate my spaceship operator. I don't know how to escape it in this comment box :-/
Avdi on June 12, 2008 12:01 PMI've heard some Latinos says "Sey-sostenido" for "C-sharp" where "sostenido" is the # used in the musical scale.
Scott Hanselman on June 12, 2008 12:02 PMI've always pronounced ASCII 'a-sic' but that can't be right it's more like 'as-key'?
Will on June 12, 2008 12:08 PMIn Russia "@" called the "doggy" (like a small dog) sometimes. I have no idea why. But other then that other ASCII symbols names are similar to most commonly used once, mentioned here already.
Maggus on June 12, 2008 12:08 PMI call the $ symbol the "ching". I was speaking to a colleague about $$ and said "doesn't the ching ching get the process id in perl?"
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