From: David T-G > Sent: 09 February 2022 13:42 > > ...and then Wols Lists said... > % > % On 08/02/2022 15:21, Paul Menzel wrote: > ... > % > % As commented elsewhere, for the sake of us ENGLISH speakers, > % *PLEASE* make that $(hash). A pound sign is £. > > Or, even better, $(octothorpe) since that's merely a symbol rather than a > food product or a result of an algorithm on data. You might even hope > that we hash this out eventually ... I was more worried that people might think we should smoke the hash. The # symbol called 'hash' in the UK. Can't remember why - but it is used to mean 'number'. 'octothorpe' is some brain-damaged name and should be shot^Werased on sight. The whole UK v US confusion about what a 'pound' sign looks like almost certainly led to UK ascii using the £ glyph for 0x23. I can imaging a phone call where a US person said '0x23 is the pound sign'. I remember problems with ascii peripherals on a ebcdic mainframe where £ $ # and \ had to get squeezed into the three available codes. Not only was in semi-random what a line printer might print, we had 'page mode' terminals where the input and output translation tables didn't always match. David - Registered Address Lakeside, Bramley Road, Mount Farm, Milton Keynes, MK1 1PT, UK Registration No: 1397386 (Wales)
