Backslash "\"
How easy it is to just
click backslash on your computer isn't it? Well let's get a bit deeper in the
science. Do you know how many people use computer each day? It is 2,267,233,742
according to 2011 statistics. That means there are so many people who have
clicked backslash out of 6,930,055,154. But mechanics around backslash is
the typographical mark; it is also called reverse
solidus, slosh, hack,
escape, knock-down character, reversed virgule, and backslat.
Backslash introduced
by the Bob Bemer into ASCII as V and /\ in 1961. Let’s talk about its
usage:
1. It is used in many
programming languages like 'C', 'Unix' and 'Perl'.
2. In some other
programming it also changes the literal characters
into meta-characters and vice-versa.
3. In using the source
code for some programming languages, it is used at the end of a line to
indicate that the trailing newline character should be ignored, so that it
looks like it is part of the current line.
4. Backslash is
used by Microsoft core Windows as to separate directory and file
components of a path.
5. MS-DOS 2.0 in 1983
used front slash but used backslash to allow paths to be typed into the
command shell.
6. In Japan, while ISO
646, JISX 0201 and Shift JIS of the encoding were about to set and
were to be used for backslash in ASCII, it was instead used for yen mark (¥), and in
Korea it was used for won currency symbol (₩).
7. Backslash is
also used as integer division in some BASIC programming language dialects.
8. Backslash is
used for left matrix divide in MATLAB and GNU Octave.
9. In mathematics, set
difference is denoted by the symbol backslash.
So, watch out for this
little teeny tinny thing over here. Next time you use backslash, better be
careful with the key, because it seems small but it is related to many of the
programs and if not used properly it could change the programming language.
That's a serious stuff!
