ASCII Pronunciation Rules for Programmers

@Michael Zed

Agree, the octothorpe’s origins are cartographic.

Shame on my UK MacBook keyboard that the # is not shown on the 3/ keycap whereas there’s a € on the the 2/@ keycap. On other UK keyboards I like the fact that # gets its own key and one doesn’t have to use a modifier key.

i think what we need to do folks is follow the original names set forth in the ITU document. here it is.

http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-T.50-199209-I/en

pages 7-9 have tables with the names associated. i’ve actually printed them out and can’t wait to confuse the hell out of my teammates!

HTTP colon solidus solidus

!*''#
^@`$$-
!*'$_
%*#4
)../
|{~~SYSTEM HALTED

Transliterated:
Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret at back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat tick dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka number four,
Ampersand right-paren dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket tilde tilde CRASH.

I see many here reference the ‘#’ (hash) symbol as ‘sharp’. Indeed it has become quite popular to do so it seems every where on the net. Mostly due (I suspect) to the fact that the ‘#’ symbol is easily accessed and the true sharp character is not.

Furthering what Bernhard mentions, that for music and also for .NET (in particular C♯)…

♯ (♯/U+0023) is NOT equal to #!

So it is C♯ (CSharp) not C# (CHash or CNumber Sign).

Consider this: if ‘#’ is an octothorpe, then ‘*’ is a hexathorpe, ‘+’ is a quadrathorpe, and ‘-’ is a duothorpe.

Which leads to the Zen koan - what is a thorpe?

I pronounce most of these “move over for a second”.

Many of these are too contextual (see mightybaldking’s post) to settle for one name, really. It’s different in German, where you usually have the same names regardless of context.

It’s fun dictating PHP; “gleich” being “equals”, “ungleich” being “not equal to”:
$a !== $b && $c === $d
dollar-a ungleichgleich dollar-b andand dollar-c gleichgleichgleich dollar-d

^ is usually referred to as “Dach” (roof), never had anybody say Zirkumflex, or circumflex in English. Hell, in writing it’s way easier saying “that ^ character”.

$ is pronouned STRING, not Dollar.
The Dollar-sign has 2 lines. STRING comes from the language BASIC and was meant to define String-Variables.

The word “dollar” in a programming-language absolutely makes no sense :slight_smile:

I like “bling” for the $, maybe I’m the only one?

reminds me of < > ! * ' ' # ^ " ` $ $ - ! * = @ $ _ % * < > ~ # 4 & [ ] . . / | { , , SYSTEM HALTED ...or if pronounced aloud, < > ! * ' ' # Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash, ^ " ` $ $ - Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash, ! * = @ $ _ Bang splat equal at dollar under-score, % * < > ~ # 4 Percent splat waka waka tilde number four, & [ ] . . / Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash, | { , , SYSTEM HALTED Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.

…stupid formatting

reminds me of

< > ! * ’ ’ #

^ " $ $ -<br /> ! * = @ $ _ <br /> % * < > ~ # 4<br /> & [ ] . . /<br /> | { , , SYSTEM HALTED<br /> ...or if pronounced aloud,<br /> < > ! * ' ' # <br /> Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash, <br /> ^ " $ $ -

Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,

! * = @ $ _

Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,

% * < > ~ # 4

Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,

& [ ] . . /

Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,

| { , , SYSTEM HALTED

Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.

Whoa you forgot the ‘She’ pronunciation for ‘#’ because otherwise how else would you say ‘Shebang bin bash’. Shebang baby! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebang_(Unix)

Some polish pronunciations:

( = left banana

) = right banana

There’s another meta-verbal notation that I learned in a shop where we were using VMS, LISPMs, PCs, and Unixen, and it was to use the word “down” in place of whatever the particular operating system in question used as a directory name separator. This made it unnecessary to remember the name of the slash/backslash/./… used to otherwise refer to directory nesting.

E.g.

  • [foo.bar.baz] - "root foo down bar down baz"
  • /foo/bar/baz - "root foo down bar down baz"
  • \foo\bar/baz - repeat ad nauseam
  • When I forget the word “tilde”, I call the ~ simply “wave” :slight_smile:

    Surprises I did not see “fuzzy” as an alternate term for asterisk…I think I first used fuzzy before even knowing what an asterisk was

    Surprised*

    What do Americans call the UK Pound sign (£)?

    +1 to Dan for mentioning ‘ampersat’ - it’s much more elegant than ‘at symbol’.