Programmer Humor

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Specifying file paths (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 months ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/programmerhumor@lemmy.ml

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[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I still don't get why the backslash is on keyboards to begin with. I don't think I've ever seen anyone write a slash backward with a pen. And even if folks do, you could've had only one slash anyways. Like, people are going to understand what it means, whether it's / or \.

I guess, it not being used for much else, does at least make it useful for escaping stuff and for Windows to use as path separator.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It seems not to have much pre-computer history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backslash#History

[IBM’s Bob Bemer] said the \ was needed so that the ALGOL Boolean operators ∧ (logical conjunction) and ∨ (logical disjunction) could be composed using /\ and \/ respectively.

[–] ddplf@szmer.info 6 points 2 months ago

Stop saying that, it has it's uses /;_;\

[–] JasminIstMuede@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 months ago

Only time I've ever used \ in a non computer context was in mathematics as "without" in set theory. As an escape character it's pretty practical too :)