[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

[steffen@sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso)]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2173 bytes --]

Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
 |On Thursday,  7 July 2016 at 16:18:41 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
 |> Nemo <cym224 at gmail.com> wrote:
 |>> On 7 July 2016 at 01:02, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
 |>>> On Friday,  1 July 2016 at 21:13:00 -0400, Steve Nickolas wrote:
 |>>>> On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, Norman Wilson wrote:
 |>>>>
 |>>>>> I suspect Yanks being pedantic about `slash' versus `forward slash'
 |>>>>> would give an Englishman a stroke.

 |>> On the other hand, the OED has the following.
 |>>
 |>> slash 5. A thin sloping line, thus /
 |>>
 |>> solidus 2. A sloping line used to separate shillings from pence, as 12/6,
 |>> in writing fractions, and for other separations of figures and letters; a
 |>> shilling-mark.

 |>> I would argue "solidus" is closer.
 |>
 |> SOLIDUS is the Unicode name, too, as is REVERSE SOLIDUS, giving
 |> SLASH and BACKSLASH as secondaries.
 |
 |Finally we have clarity!  From now on it's only (without shouting)

Copied and pasted from UnicodeData.txt.

 |solidus and reverse solidus.  No confusion any more, at least not for
 |those in the know.

Maybe it helps that the German «Schrägstrich» will desert into
Slash («Herkunft: englisch slash, eigentlich = (harter, kurzer)
Schlag, Hieb, laut- und bewegungsnachahmend oder zu altfranzösisch
esclachier = (zer)teilen») and that a furtherly described
Schrägstrich will wind up in «Backslash» («Herkunft: englisch
backslash, aus: back = zurück und slash = Hieb, Schnitt»)

It gives me cause for concern that we replace a civil word like
«Schrägstrich» ("oblique bar") with something aggressive and
dismembering that slash seems to represent.  That may be a reason
for Linguists to promote solidus and ban the other words into the
commentary, one might think.

...and that actually makes me wonder why the engineers that
created what became POSIX preferred slash instead -- i hope it is
not the proud of high skills in using (maybe light) sabers that
some people of the engineer community seem to foster.  But it
could be the sober truth.  Or, it could be a bug caused by
inconsideration.  And that seems very likely now.

--steffen