$ means dollar...
Matt Wilson
that a '$' was a dollar sign but only that it was a shorthand symbol for
'string'....
Ho hum...
- MDW.
Guesser
> It occurred to me today that for some while in my childood I never knew
> that a '$' was a dollar sign but only that it was a shorthand symbol for
> 'string'....
Well I always draw dollar signs with two lines, and string with one...
I used to draw two lines on a � sign too, but it turns out[1] that the
actual currency symbol for GBP has one stroke, and two strokes is (the
now defunct) Italian Lira
[1] That should start an argument [2]
[2] Yes both are accepted ways to write the pound sign [3] I have no
idea which came first
[3] unless you're American in which case a pound sign is a # [4]
[4] which lives on shift-3 on an American layout keyboard where the �
goes, so that's shift-3 is the pound sign unless you're using an
American keyboard in which case there is no pound sign, and shift-3 is
instead a pound sign [5]
[5] confused yet?
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Chris Young
to MC Guesser:
> Matt Wilson wrote:
> > It occurred to me today that for some while in my childood I never knew
> > that a '$' was a dollar sign but only that it was a shorthand symbol for
> > 'string'....
>
> Well I always draw dollar signs with two lines, and string with one...
>
> I used to draw two lines on a � sign too, but it turns out[1] that the
> actual currency symbol for GBP has one stroke, and two strokes is (the
> now defunct) Italian Lira
I used to draw two lines on dollar (and pound) signs too. I'm not
sure why I stopped, probably something to do with the width of the nib
and the fiddlyness of getting two parallel lines vertically down an S
which is only about half a centimetre in width.
I maybe stopped doing it on pound signs because if I write them quick
they look like Euros.
Chris
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Brian Gaff
Then there is ~ ang all sorts of other funny symbols.
The most confusing I think depending on where you live is # which is
number, hash or even pound in some places. Of course the actual Speccy
� was in a very strange place.#
Brian
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"Matt Wilson" <fz...@userot21andtakethistextoutmnzobbqyr.qrzba.pb.hx> wrote
in message news:Xns9CC77B78492CFz...@216.196.109.145...
Guesser
> Well who had heard of the @ symbol till email used it?
Grocers.
It's shorthand for each at. e.g. SomeProduct @ SomePrice
dott.Piergiorgio
> Well who had heard of the @ symbol till email used it?
>
> Then there is ~ ang all sorts of other funny symbols.
Here in Italy the ~ is used for "circa" "approx." like: "..Then, ~
November 1970, this cargo of ~2000 ton rans aground..."
Best regards from Italy,
Dott. Piergiorgio.
Tim Fardell
I always used to call it a 'dollar' symbol. I would pronounce the string
variable 'f$' as 'eff dollar'.
I remember thinking how weird it was when I heard people referring to it
as the 'string' symbol.
RLM
> It occurred to me today that for some while in my childood I never knew
> that a '$' was a dollar sign but only that it was a shorthand symbol for
> 'string'....
It will always mean STRING to me. Has done since I was 10 years old on
my ZX81. I still use it at the end of string variables in pascal and BBC
Basic.
Cheers,
Becky.
Chris Young
to MC dott.Piergiorgio:
> Brian Gaff ha scritto:
> > Well who had heard of the @ symbol till email used it?
> >
> > Then there is ~ ang all sorts of other funny symbols.
>
> Here in Italy the ~ is used for "circa" "approx." like: "..Then, ~
> November 1970, this cargo of ~2000 ton rans aground..."
Mathematically, that should be a symbol which looks like two tildes
one above the other.
Wikipedia tells me that ~ is also correct in maths but only used for
very rough approximations.
I've always wondered why the ASCII character set has three different
types of brackets. I'm sure there must be a good reason for it.
dott.Piergiorgio
> On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:55:14 +0100 da kidz on comp.sys.sinclair were rappin'
> to MC dott.Piergiorgio:
>
>> Brian Gaff ha scritto:
>>> Well who had heard of the @ symbol till email used it?
>>>
>>> Then there is ~ ang all sorts of other funny symbols.
>> Here in Italy the ~ is used for "circa" "approx." like: "..Then, ~
>> November 1970, this cargo of ~2000 ton rans aground..."
>
> Mathematically, that should be a symbol which looks like two tildes
> one above the other.
>
> Wikipedia tells me that ~ is also correct in maths but only used for
> very rough approximations.
>
> I've always wondered why the ASCII character set has three different
> types of brackets. I'm sure there must be a good reason for it.
Surely C language uses all three brackets, but C was after the
introduction of the standard; Someone known some pre-1968 language whose
use more than one set of brackets or has syntactic/readability
improvement with one or more set of brackets ?
excluding IBM's horrors (BCD/EBCDIC), the earlier charsets was the
baudot telegraphic/TTY code (5 bits, 31+31 with a shift char) and the
fieldata (6 bits, 64 chars)
Charles Richmond
> On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:32:04 +0000 da kidz on comp.sys.sinclair were rappin'
> to MC Guesser:
>
>> Matt Wilson wrote:
>>> It occurred to me today that for some while in my childood I never knew
>>> that a '$' was a dollar sign but only that it was a shorthand symbol for
>>> 'string'....
>> Well I always draw dollar signs with two lines, and string with one...
>>
>> I used to draw two lines on a � sign too, but it turns out[1] that the
>> actual currency symbol for GBP has one stroke, and two strokes is (the
>> now defunct) Italian Lira
>
> I used to draw two lines on dollar (and pound) signs too. I'm not
> sure why I stopped, probably something to do with the width of the nib
> and the fiddlyness of getting two parallel lines vertically down an S
> which is only about half a centimetre in width.
>
> I maybe stopped doing it on pound signs because if I write them quick
> they look like Euros.
>
Well, when the pounds look enough like Euros, they may *become*
Euros. :-)
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Charles Richmond
> Well who had heard of the @ symbol till email used it?
>
Anybody who took a typing class has heard of @.
> Then there is ~ ang all sorts of other funny symbols.
I believe that "~" is call tilde.
>
> The most confusing I think depending on where you live is # which is
> number, hash or even pound in some places. Of course the actual Speccy
> � was in a very strange place.#
>
The "#" is also called an octothorpe.
Charles Richmond
When used as such, ASCII contains *four* different types of
brackets: (), {}, [], and <>. The SNOBOL4 language uses <> as a
type of brackets.
Back before the days of standardization, there were several 5-bit
character sets.
Charles Richmond
Just like me, when I heard "Indian clubs" referred to as "juggling
pins".
Kevin Reilly
> When used as such, ASCII contains *four* different types of
> brackets: (), {}, [], and <>. The SNOBOL4 language uses <> as a
> type of brackets.
Just to muddy the waters further, since ASCII is of American origin only
one of these sets (the square one) is technically brackets. The others are
parentheses, braces and inequality signs.
As for $, even from an early age I used to internally voice it as 'dollar'
or 'string' depending on context. What surprised me was that the British
Currah uSpeech used 'dollar' for the character in isolation and was
inconsistent when $ was part of a keyword. For instance it voiced it as
's' in VAL$ (presumably to differentiate it from VAL) but ignored it
completely in SCREEN$ and, ironically, in STR$ where the whole keyword was
voiced as 'string'.
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Charles Richmond
> On 20/11/2009 16:35, Charles Richmond wrote:
>
>> When used as such, ASCII contains *four* different types of
>> brackets: (), {}, [], and <>. The SNOBOL4 language uses <> as a
>> type of brackets.
>
> Just to muddy the waters further, since ASCII is of American origin only
> one of these sets (the square one) is technically brackets. The others are
> parentheses, braces and inequality signs.
>
Actaully, the word "bracket" can be used as a generic term for any
pair of symbols that enclose text. That's why most in the states
say "square brackets" to be very specific about what they want.
See the following dictionary entry:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bracket
So we have "square brackets" [] and parentheses (), and "angle
brackets" <>, and "curly brackets", or "curly braces", or
sometimes "squirrelly braces" (;-) ) {}.
> As for $, even from an early age I used to internally voice it as 'dollar'
> or 'string' depending on context. What surprised me was that the British
> Currah uSpeech used 'dollar' for the character in isolation and was
> inconsistent when $ was part of a keyword. For instance it voiced it as
> 's' in VAL$ (presumably to differentiate it from VAL) but ignored it
> completely in SCREEN$ and, ironically, in STR$ where the whole keyword was
> voiced as 'string'.
>
I guess there is *no* reason for British folk to be familiar with
the "dollar sign", at least *not* to the level that they are
familiar with the "pound sign". Probably the *best* use of a
"dollar sign" is to indicate a string variable or a function
returning a string in BASIC. ;-)
Daniel Mandic
> The "#" is also called an octothorpe.
Hi Charles!
Some Areas in Austria call them 'Hoelzchen' (woodsticks). I prefer to
say 'channel' (Kanal...).
--
Daniel Mandic
Paul E Collins
> It occurred to me today that for some while in my childood I never knew
> that a '$' was a dollar sign but only that it was a shorthand symbol for
> 'string'....
I'm the opposite. I used to pronounce the keywords as "INKEY dollar" and
"C.H.R. dollar".
Eq.
spi...@freenet.co.uk
I still do.
:)
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Ian B
> On 20/11/2009 16:35, Charles Richmond wrote:
>
>> When used as such, ASCII contains *four* different types of
>> brackets: (), {}, [], and <>. The SNOBOL4 language uses <> as a
>> type of brackets.
>
> Just to muddy the waters further, since ASCII is of American origin
> only one of these sets (the square one) is technically brackets. The
> others are parentheses, braces and inequality signs.
>
> As for $, even from an early age I used to internally voice it as
> 'dollar' or 'string' depending on context. What surprised me was that
> the British Currah uSpeech used 'dollar' for the character in
> isolation and was inconsistent when $ was part of a keyword. For
> instance it voiced it as 's' in VAL$ (presumably to differentiate it
> from VAL) but ignored it completely in SCREEN$ and, ironically, in
> STR$ where the whole keyword was voiced as 'string'.
I was inconsistent. I internally voiced SCREEN$ as "screenstring", INKEY$ as
"inkeys" and CHR$ as somthing like "crus".
Ian
Duncan Snowden
> The "#" is also called an octothorpe.
I never knew that. What an excellent word. Even better than �ampersand�.
--
Duncan Snowden.
Carlo Ponzi
<alis...@alistairsserver.no-ip.org> wrote:
>[3] unless you're American in which case a pound sign is a # [4]
Actually, in the USA # is the sign for pound *weight*. Naturally,
they don't have any sign for pound sterling (or anything else foreign
to them) because They Are The World. Or something.
Carlo Ponzi
<dott.Pierg...@KAIGUN.fastwebnet.it> wrote:
>Brian Gaff ha scritto:
>> Well who had heard of the @ symbol till email used it?
>>
>> Then there is ~ ang all sorts of other funny symbols.
>
>Here in Italy the ~ is used for "circa" "approx." like: "..Then, ~
>November 1970, this cargo of ~2000 ton rans aground..."
In dictionaries (well, the OED anyway) ~ is used as a placeholder for
the word being defined.
jgharston
> Charles Richmond wrote:
> > The "#" is also called an octothorpe.
>
That's why I used it to indicate output in *oct*al in my PDP-11 BASIC.
--
JGH