Why String?

DerekT P

Everybody every programmer I knew pronounced it that way. Even professional Fortran and Cobol programmers recognised the convention from their early Basic days. (Who didn't learn programming via Basic?)

Michael Kingsford Gray

I did not learn programming from BASIC, for one. As it has not been invented when I learned programming. Is that a valid answer? I accept your correction that you are not aware of any BASIC programmer who did not pronounce it "that way". But that is not my lookout. I began with FORTRAN, an a CDC6600. I subsequently learned BASIC from its inception, and made a large portion of my long professional career from programming in it. But, I have NEVER heard of this vocalisation until you raised it. I have been a professional FORTRAN programmer since 1973, and a COBOL programmer since 1975. Yet I do not recognise this so-called 'convention' in one fraction of an iota. Not with me, nor any of my compartriates. Strange, that. I still call "bovine faeces".

Mike Hankey

On order thanks.

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englebart

The next project I start or join on the "ground floor" will ban String/Text as a datatype. Everything declared as a String could and should have a more descriptive data type. Which API is more descriptive? assign(String, String) OR assign(EmployeeId, DepartmentId)

DarthDana

I've heard it that way. In fact, that's also the way my colleagues referred to it.

DarthDana

Love it! :-D A string walks into a bar...

MikeD 2

Michael K Gray wrote:

Absolute intercoursing-bullsh*t.

I see your bullsh*t and raise you a pile of horsesh*t Whilst possibly not quite as old long term developer as you I learnt basic in around 81 and remember that A$ was always pronounced A String So whilst it may be a slight exaggeration to say that it was always known that way it certainly was a common way to talk about it. Even on this side of the pond

svella

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_(computer_science)[^]

RefugeeFromSlashDot

Then there are people like me who never heard of it pronounced that way until we read it here. In the DEC world it seemed be pronounced A-dollar. A% was pronounced A-percent on those rare times when one couldn't tell from the context whether we meant an integer or floating-point variable. Perhaps it's an architecture difference; those of us who started in the mini world vs. those who started in the micro world.

BrainiacV

I guess it is time for this grizzled olde tyme programmer to edjumacate the youngin's. Back when core (ya know, that pre-RAM stuff) was still being strung by hand and was measured in single digit K's (you know what a K is doncha? --a millionth of a gigabyte, or thereabouts...) To teach the programmers who had just emerged from the primordial slime about a sequence of characters instead of the pure numbers that they were used to, they came up with the idea of describing them as akin to beads strung on a "string". "A whale of a tale, and it's all true, I swear by my tattoo."

Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.

spencepk

Too bad it doesn't come in 55-gallon drums :(

PhilLenoir

Funny that, both the VIC-20 and BBC Micro manuals used exactly that convention. I guess that it depends which BASIC you learned and from which course or manual. These varieties of BASIC only read the first two characters of variable names, although you could make your code more readable using more.

Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.

Dominic Amann

Because a string denotes a sequence of arbitrary characters, whereas text connotes readable language of some kind.

PhilLenoir

Numbers aren't strings of digits but "Strings" are strings of characters. Base numeric data types are all of fixed size, but text data always had the problem of being of indeterminate length and required a terminator (as in C), a size and data (as in Pascal) or padded fixed length (early databases).

Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.

DarkTizzy

Absolutely A-String FTW! Although I much prefer G$. :cool:

User 8102478

Has to do with the internal representation. A string is an array of char. A number (int, float etc) is a 4-64 byte binary. A string is typically though of as variable length, whereas a number is a definite size. To look at a number as a sequence of digits, you are actually converting from a binary representation to a string. That sequence of digits is a sequence of char, which is to say its actually a string.

User 8230845

I've been programming since 1979 and that is always how I heard it pronounced "A-Sting" I also to this day call the $ a String and the ! a Bang etc.

aojepojefpoejafpeoj

Right, because assign(int, int) or creating a wrapper for string named EmployeeId is much better.

Member 8348554

Why a duck? brian

Kythen

You know what makes that even more amusing? You're actually correct! The ancient Inca used knotted strings called quipu[^] as a sort of calculator. :cool: