ASCII Pronunciation Rules for Programmers

Here in Brazil we pronounce “#” as “lasagna”.

Thanks!

One of the most useful blog posts I have seen in awhile. The most often misused/misunderstood here at my work: slash/backslash and brackets braces.

~Lee

Julian: Bindestrich is way too long; Minus is much more efficient to say. And the computer doesn’t distinguish that anyway (it’s always ASCII 0x2d).

[ICR]: Tilde is also bad on certain german keyboard layouts, where you have to press AltGr+~ and then Space. Really annoying for a “quick” /donate 100 on the console…

For me:
’’ are “of”
‘std::vectorint’ is pronounced “stid vector of int”
’[]’ are “sub”
‘array[i]’ is pronounced “array sub i”
’@’ is pronounced “AT” with more emphasis than if you has just written ‘at’
’#!/bin/bash’ is “hash bang bin bash” also called “drum-set falling down stairs”

  • somehow became tack when I first encountered it (vice dak I suppose).

You know: net use wack wack server wack share tack 1 space slash user colon company dot com wack steve

I also learned #! as sh’bang.

" - inverted commas

  • left quack
  • right quack
  • quack quack!

I’m surprised to see “strudel” on the list for @. I’ve only heard it in Hebrew. Are the names listed in any particular order? I wonder how much an effect Hebrew speakers have on programming. For example, the name for “::” in one dialect of PHP: Paamayim Nekudotayim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paamayim_Nekudotayim)

I’ve been calling %= this thing % a “butterfly tag” (squint at the percent sign), but I really only do it to annoy my co-workers at this point.

In Malaysia, @ is also “read” as “alias”… I still don’t know why…

How do you folks read this btw: =

argh… that should have been =

@ sign has some really funny names around the world. For example in Poland we call it a monkey (ma#322;pa).
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/At_sign/id/304590

Calling ‘#’ for hash may be confusing if you’re also dealing with hash maps or hashing algorithms… :wink: (In Norway we just call it ‘square’.)

‘’ is also called ‘et’ (from Latin/French).

Regarding ‘qoutation marks’, that also quickly gets wrong in Norwegian, since we often use and (they don’t have ASCII chars) to quite stuff. Usually we just say single and double quotes for ’ and ", but a lot of people confuse ’ and `, which can be dangerous if you’re ever doing anything in a *nix shell.

Sign Swedish (direct english translation if available)
’ fnutt
" dubbelfnutt (double fnutt)
{ } vnster/hger msvinge (left/right seagull)

brdgrd (lumber yard)

Great topic!

Ruby’s comparator method = is sometimes called the spaceship because it looks like a UFO! Also, I’ve heard the = operator called the hash rocket because it’s used to assign values to hash keys and looks like a rocket. I can’t understand why most of you folks don’t seem to like Ruby…

So the next time a programmer walks up to you and says, “oh, it’s easy! Just type wax bang at hash buck grapes circumflex and splat wane”, you’ll know what they mean.

Yes. They mean “I’m a poser who thinks using obsolescent vocab words from the Jargon File makes me leet.”

(Reading the jargon file is fascinating and educational. Emulating it, not so much.)

When I worked for a software company that had telco customers, ! was bang, * was splat, and # was either pound or octothorpe. I still like hearing bang for !, but I never got used to splat for *.

python -c “print ‘Thankyou’ * int(1e6)”

Funny stuff in Spanish.

@ is “arroba” which is equivalent to 25 pounds (12.5kg)

$ is “pesos” because I’m in Colombia we have here the COP (Colombian Peso)

[] is “corchetes” from the french “crochet” which is some kind of hook.

{} is “llaves” which literally means keys.

^ I call this “sombrerito” which means little hat.

_ is “barra al piso” this sounds kinda funny.

~ I call this “virgulilla” some people call this “gusanito” which means little worm.

How do you guys read out loud lambda expressions such as “t = t.Name

Using the phrase “goes to”, as in “t goes to t.Name”.

I have heard, and I do call, the * a kleene star…

You left out the all-important “broken-bar” on UK keyboards, a real tragedy of a character for US developers, especially when it is used as a string delimiter:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_bar