I Propose We Rename \ and /
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A coworker was recently confused about which slash was the backslash and which was the forward slash. I propose we rename them, perhaps to one of these:
\
/
Slide Slash
Hill Slash
Five Slash
One Slash
Negative Slash
Positive Slash
Fall Slash
Rise Slash
Other ideas?
"The name of a thing does not matter as much as the quality of the thing." -WS The options given are all left to right (English reading order) biased. Put another way one person’s slide is another person’s hill. The Unicode tables refer to these as: / Solidus (with alternatives slash and virgule) \ Reverse Solidus (with alternative backslash) If you need to be explicit always refer to solidus as “a line moving from the bottom left to the top right of imaginary box enclosing the character” … or slash. Do that a couple of times and people will become “not confused”.
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considering the directions. the names could be. North West (NW) Slash or South East(SE) Slash for \ North East (NE) Slash or South West(SW) Slash for / There is no confusion now. From the suggested name we can know the direction and find the correct slash.
I'm not sure everyone can use those terms without a compass ;P (and then some may not even be able to if they have one...)
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How I teach: BACK slash is near the BACKspace. Done.
Hmm, on *my* keyboard it's next to the left shift key... ('/' is [shift]-7 on my keyboard, before you ask, or alternately on the numeric keypad (but don't think to make use of that, as some Laptops don't sport a numpad!) )
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A coworker was recently confused about which slash was the backslash and which was the forward slash. I propose we rename them, perhaps to one of these:
\
/
Slide Slash
Hill Slash
Five Slash
One Slash
Negative Slash
Positive Slash
Fall Slash
Rise Slash
Other ideas?
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As the backslash leans backwards and the forward slash leans forwards my proposal would be to tell them to stop being a retard.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.
ChrisElston wrote:
As the backslash leans backwards and the forward slash leans forwards my proposal would be to tell them to stop being a retard.
While I understand that English is the trade language of the day, the backslash only leans forward if it is facing the reader's right - if it is facing left, then the backslash leans forward (and obviously the forward slash leans backward.) It gets even worse if we include languages read top-to-bottom! To completely eliminate the possibility of confusion, some set of terms which is entirely absolute and non-relative must be constructed - which will, of course, entirely confuse everybody who already knows a slash from a backslash ...
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A coworker was recently confused about which slash was the backslash and which was the forward slash. I propose we rename them, perhaps to one of these:
\
/
Slide Slash
Hill Slash
Five Slash
One Slash
Negative Slash
Positive Slash
Fall Slash
Rise Slash
Other ideas?
I was about to suggest something along the lines of downslope|upslope, but after reading some of the comments about right to left reading I wondered if for these people that would work, since reading right to left implies a downward slope on '/' rather than upward... Referring to a clock's digits also doesn't seem right when there are so many ways to display time. It may work, but maybe it won't be easily grasped in some locales - I have no idea. The only thing I can think of that's universal, is mathematics: a mathematical 2D coordinate system typically uses a horizontal x-axis pointing to the right, and a vertical y axis pointing up. Graphs in a 2D coordinate systems are implicitely read left to right, in that a line coming from the upper left quadrant passing into the lower right is considered 'falling', or having a negative gradient, whereas a line running from the lower left to the upper right is considered to have a positive gradient. So we could call '\' downgrade and '/' upgrade. :cool: Ok, neg-gradient|pos-gradient would be more concise, but then not everyone's into math-speak. ;) Or maybe we just shorten this to down|up: we would loose the reference to math, but the only people potentially not getting it would be right-to-left readers, and I'm pretty sure they're more aware of that kind of interpretory problem than anyone else.
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A coworker was recently confused about which slash was the backslash and which was the forward slash. I propose we rename them, perhaps to one of these:
\
/
Slide Slash
Hill Slash
Five Slash
One Slash
Negative Slash
Positive Slash
Fall Slash
Rise Slash
Other ideas?
We could take a note from heraldry and go with: \ = "bend" / = "bend sinister", or just "sinister" ...
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I'm not sure everyone can use those terms without a compass ;P (and then some may not even be able to if they have one...)
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A coworker was recently confused about which slash was the backslash and which was the forward slash. I propose we rename them, perhaps to one of these:
\
/
Slide Slash
Hill Slash
Five Slash
One Slash
Negative Slash
Positive Slash
Fall Slash
Rise Slash
Other ideas?
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A coworker was recently confused about which slash was the backslash and which was the forward slash. I propose we rename them, perhaps to one of these:
\
/
Slide Slash
Hill Slash
Five Slash
One Slash
Negative Slash
Positive Slash
Fall Slash
Rise Slash
Other ideas?
Uphill slash downhill slash
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A coworker was recently confused about which slash was the backslash and which was the forward slash. I propose we rename them, perhaps to one of these:
\
/
Slide Slash
Hill Slash
Five Slash
One Slash
Negative Slash
Positive Slash
Fall Slash
Rise Slash
Other ideas?
It's simple. In English, we read from left to right, therefore, going right is going forward. That makes / the forward (leaning) slash, and \ the backslash. Renaming them will only spread the confusion.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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A coworker was recently confused about which slash was the backslash and which was the forward slash. I propose we rename them, perhaps to one of these:
\
/
Slide Slash
Hill Slash
Five Slash
One Slash
Negative Slash
Positive Slash
Fall Slash
Rise Slash
Other ideas?
I read all the replies and also thought on RTL languages. Direction of writing could be different but not the direction itself. So, for everybody, right is right and left is left, top is top and bottom is bottom. Therefore, my suggestions are based on absolute directions: \ = TL (Top-Left) or LT (Left-Top) Slash / = BR (Bottom-Right) or RB (Right-Bottom) Slash However, more appropriate I think would be: / = NE (North-East) or EN (East-North) Slash \ = SW (North-West) or WN (West-North) Slash Or take the "North" common: / = E-Slash (NE Slash) \ = W-Slash (NW Slash) Also look at the keyboard; W and E keys are adjacent and W is at West side and E is at East side of each other!
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A coworker was recently confused about which slash was the backslash and which was the forward slash. I propose we rename them, perhaps to one of these:
\
/
Slide Slash
Hill Slash
Five Slash
One Slash
Negative Slash
Positive Slash
Fall Slash
Rise Slash
Other ideas?
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It's simple. In English, we read from left to right, therefore, going right is going forward. That makes / the forward (leaning) slash, and \ the backslash. Renaming them will only spread the confusion.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
Yeah, that's how I like to think of it, though it does take the assumption that it's leaning and not swinging.
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Yeah, that's how I like to think of it, though it does take the assumption that it's leaning and not swinging.
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I remember it this way, bottom to top lean-forward, / - forward slash bottom to top lean-backward, \ - backslash
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A coworker was recently confused about which slash was the backslash and which was the forward slash. I propose we rename them, perhaps to one of these:
\
/
Slide Slash
Hill Slash
Five Slash
One Slash
Negative Slash
Positive Slash
Fall Slash
Rise Slash
Other ideas?
An old work colleague used to say / - slash \ - slosh
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A coworker was recently confused about which slash was the backslash and which was the forward slash. I propose we rename them, perhaps to one of these:
\
/
Slide Slash
Hill Slash
Five Slash
One Slash
Negative Slash
Positive Slash
Fall Slash
Rise Slash
Other ideas?
I'm invoking gravity and english syntax. The falling forwards slash and the falling backwards slash.
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How I teach: BACK slash is near the BACKspace. Done.
On my keyboard '/' is just to the left of the right shift key and '\' is on the right of the right shift key
< > ? |N M , . / SHIFT \
Steve _________________ I C(++) therefore I am
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I read all the replies and also thought on RTL languages. Direction of writing could be different but not the direction itself. So, for everybody, right is right and left is left, top is top and bottom is bottom. Therefore, my suggestions are based on absolute directions: \ = TL (Top-Left) or LT (Left-Top) Slash / = BR (Bottom-Right) or RB (Right-Bottom) Slash However, more appropriate I think would be: / = NE (North-East) or EN (East-North) Slash \ = SW (North-West) or WN (West-North) Slash Or take the "North" common: / = E-Slash (NE Slash) \ = W-Slash (NW Slash) Also look at the keyboard; W and E keys are adjacent and W is at West side and E is at East side of each other!
my keyboard orientation: W is on the south side and E is on the North side :sigh:
Steve _________________ I C(++) therefore I am