The Jargon File by Eric S. Raymond (sites to read books for free .TXT) 📖

hack, whack; escape (from C/UNIX); reverse slash; slosh; backslant; backwhack. Rare: bash; <reverse slant>; reversed virgule; [backslat].

^

Common: hat; control; uparrow; caret; <circumflex>. Rare: xor sign, chevron; [shark (or shark-fin)]; to the (`to the power of'); fang; pointer (in Pascal). Common: <underline>; underscore; underbar; under. Rare: score; backarrow; skid; [flatworm].

`

Common: backquote; left quote; left single quote; open quote; <grave accent>; grave. Rare: backprime; [backspark]; unapostrophe; birk; blugle; back tick; back glitch; push; <opening single quotation mark>; quasiquote.

{ }

Common: o/c brace; l/r brace; l/r squiggly; l/r squiggly bracket/brace; l/r curly bracket/brace; <opening/closing brace>. Rare: brace/unbrace; curly/uncurly; leftit/rytit; l/r squirrelly; [embrace/bracelet].

|

Common: bar; or; or-bar; v-bar; pipe; vertical bar. Rare: <vertical line>; gozinta; thru; pipesinta (last three from UNIX); [spike].

~

Common: <tilde>; squiggle; [649]twiddle; not. Rare: approx; wiggle; swung dash; enyay; [sqiggle (sic)].

The pronunciation of # as `pound' is common in the U.S. but a bad

idea; [650]Commonwealth Hackish has its own, rather more apposite use

of `pound sign' (confusingly, on British keyboards the pound graphic

happens to replace #; thus Britishers sometimes call # on a U.S.-ASCII

keyboard `pound', compounding the American error). The U.S. usage

derives from an old-fashioned commercial practice of using a # suffix

to tag pound weights on bills of lading. The character is usually

pronounced `hash' outside the U.S. There are more culture wars over

the correct pronunciation of this character than any other, which has

led to the [651]ha ha only serious suggestion that it be pronounced

`shibboleth' (see Judges 12:6 in an Old Testament or Tanakh).

The uparrow' name for circumflex andleftarrow' name for underline

are historical relics from archaic ASCII (the 1963 version), which had

these graphics in those character positions rather than the modern

punctuation characters.

The swung dash' orapproximation' sign is not quite the same as

tilde in typeset material but the ASCII tilde serves for both (compare

[652]angle brackets).

Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The #, $, >, and &

characters, for example, are all pronounced "hex" in different

communities because various assemblers use them as a prefix tag for

hexadecimal constants (in particular, # in many assembler-programming

cultures, $ in the 6502 world, > at Texas Instruments, and & on the

BBC Micro, Sinclair, and some Z80 machines). See also [653]splat.

The inability of ASCII text to correctly represent any of the world's

other major languages makes the designers' choice of 7 bits look more

and more like a serious [654]misfeature as the use of international

networks continues to increase (see [655]software rot). Hardware and

software from the U.S. still tends to embody the assumption that ASCII

is the universal character set and that characters have 7 bits; this

is a major irritant to people who want to use a character set suited

to their own languages. Perversely, though, efforts to solve this

problem by proliferating `national' character sets produce an

evolutionary pressure to use a smaller subset common to all those in

use.

Node:ASCII art, Next:[656]ASCIIbetical order, Previous:[657]ASCII,

Up:[658]= A =

ASCII art n.

The fine art of drawing diagrams using the ASCII character set (mainly

|, -, /, , and +). Also known as character graphics' orASCII

graphics'; see also [659]boxology. Here is a serious example:

o----)||(--+--|<----+ +---------o + D O

L )||( | | | C U

A I )||( +-->|-+ | +-//-+--o - T

C N )||( | | | | P

E )||( +-->|-+--)---+--|(--+-o U

)||( | | | GND T

o----)||(--+--|<----+----------+

A power supply consisting of a full wave rectifier circuit

feeding a capacitor input filter circuit

And here are some very silly examples:

|///| ---/| --- |---/| ---

| | o.O| ACK! / --- |` '| ---/

| | =(---)= THPHTH! / / /

| (o)(o) U /

C ---) (---) /// --- ////

| ,---| (oo) / /

| / /------- U (---)

/--- || | /---V `v'- oo )

/ ||---W|| * * |--| || |`. |---/

//-o-\ ------=======------

====--- /.. .. /---==== Klingons rule OK!

// ------O---/---

--- /---/

There is an important subgenre of ASCII art that puns on the standard

character names in the fashion of a rebus.

+--------------------------------------------------------+

| ^^^^^^^^^^^^ |

| ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ |

| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |

| ^^^^^^^ B ^^^^^^^^^ |

| ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |

+--------------------------------------------------------+

" A Bee in the Carrot Patch "

Within humorous ASCII art, there is for some reason an entire

flourishing subgenre of pictures of silly cows. Four of these are

reproduced in the examples above, here are three more:

(---) (---) (---) (/) ($$) (**)

/-------/ /-------/ /-------/

/ | 666 || / |=====|| / | ||

||----|| * ||----|| * ||----||

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

Satanic cow This cow is a Yuppie Cow in love

Finally, here's a magnificent example of ASCII art depicting an

Edwardian train station in Dunedin, New Zealand:

.-. /--- |---| |]---[| / I JL/ | JL

.-. i () | () i .-.

|---| .^. /--- LJ=======LJ /--- .^. |---|

.---/---.---./------.---.---.---.---.L---J---/.-. .-.---L---J.---.---.---.---.---/---.---./---.---.---.---

., |-,-| ., L---J |---| [I] |---| L---J ., |-,-| ., .,

JL |-O-| JL L---J%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%L---J JL |-O-| JL JL

IIIIII---HH---'-'-'---HH---IIIIII|---|=======H=======|---|IIIIII---HH---'-'-'---HH---IIIIII---HH---

-------[]-------[]-------[---]----.=I=./----[---]-------[]-------[]--------[]-

---/--- ||---I---//|| ---/--- [---] []---/---L---J------[] [---] ---/--- ||---I---//|| ---/--- ||

|---| ||=/---|---=|| |---|---|---| ---L---L---J---J--- |---|---|---| ||=/---|---=|| |---| ||-

|---| |||---|---||| |---[---]--------===--------[---]---| |||---|---||| |---| |||

IIIIIII[---]IIIII[---]IIIIIL---J---II---|---|---II---L---JIIIII[---]IIIII[---]IIIIIIII[---]

---I---/ [---]---I---/[---] ---I---[---]II/[]---I/---/[]II/[---]---I---/ [---]---I---/[---] ---I---/ [---]

./ .L---J/ L---J./ L---JI I[]/ []I IL---J .L---J/ L---J./ .L---J

| |L---J| |L---J| L---J| |[]| |[]| |L---J |L---J| |L---J| |L---J

|---JL---JL---JL---JL---|-|| |[]| |[]| ||-|---JL---JL---JL---JL---JL---J

There is a newsgroup, alt.ascii-art, devoted to this genre; however,

see also [660]warlording.

Node:ASCIIbetical order, Next:[661]astroturfing, Previous:[662]ASCII

art, Up:[663]=