From: cowan@mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Subject: [TUHS] Slashes
Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2016 11:59:51 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20160709155951.GB1076@mercury.ccil.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <201607091322.u69DMtSu001030@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
Doug McIlroy scripsit:
> This is sheer hypothesis, but I have always thought that \ got
> onto printer chains and type balls as a crude drawing aid. Ditto
> for |. Once the characters became available people began to find
> uses for them.
<http://www.bobbemer.com/BACSLASH.HTM> tells us that \ was introduced
into ASCII by Bob Bemer in order to make \/ for 'or' and /\ for 'and'
available, primarily for the use of Algol 60. It had not been available
in any manufacturer's character set before ASCII-63, as far as is known.
Unfortunately, none of the five existing Algol 60 implementations actually
support these sequences.
| was commonplace, however, as it has at least 15 mathematical uses:
see <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_bar#Mathematics>.
As far as I know, it has always been used as 'or' on computers.
--
John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan at ccil.org
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarves.
--Murray Gell-Mann
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-07-09 15:59 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 12+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-07-09 13:22 Doug McIlroy
2016-07-09 15:59 ` John Cowan [this message]
2016-07-11 6:44 ` Peter Jeremy
2016-07-10 14:11 ` Nemo
2016-07-10 20:23 ` pete
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2016-07-10 0:52 Doug McIlroy
2016-07-10 1:51 ` John Cowan
2016-07-11 12:09 ` Tony Finch
2016-07-11 12:34 ` John Cowan
2016-07-14 14:48 ` Christian Neukirchen
2016-07-08 14:52 [TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS) Clem Cole
2016-07-09 16:47 ` Dave Horsfall
2016-07-09 17:03 ` John Cowan
2016-07-09 17:21 ` Milo Velimirovic
2016-07-10 14:38 ` [TUHS] Slashes Christian Neukirchen
2016-07-08 11:25 [TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS) Norman Wilson
2016-07-10 18:26 ` [TUHS] Slashes Adam Sampson
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