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Brian Olore
Brian Olore

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How do you say ~!@#$%

I had a random thought the other day regarding the characters on the keyboard that us developers use every day. I realized that we probably have very different names and expectations of what each of them are used for, or even call them.

So I did a quick survey of some non-developer friends and family and here's what I came up with:

Character Me Other Others I've heard
~ Tilde Tildee, Approximately Squiggle
! Exclamation Make a Point Not, Bang
@ At Kill
# Pound Number, Hashtag
$ Dollar Money, "String" in Excel
% Percent Mod, Modulus
^ Carrot Accent
& Ampersand And
* Asterisk Star, "Times" in Excel Splat
( Open Paren Left Paren, Quotation Mark
) Close Paren Right Paren, Other end of Question Mark
_ Underscore Underline Lodash
+ Plus

I've combined references to "point", "mark" and "sign". They seem to be used interchangeably.

Which did I miss? What do you call these characters, and what do you expect them to do? I'll update the table as you comment

Top comments (1)

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val_baca profile image
Valentin Baca • Edited
`    tick, backquote
#    hash
%    mod, remainder
^    xor ("ex-or"), hat
&    (in C) "address of" 
*    (in C) "pointer to", "pointer of", "array of", "dereference", "what x points to" , times (in Math), "any number of" (in Regex)
+    "one or more of" (in Regex)
-    dash, hyphen, minus
[    open square bracket
]    closed square bracket
[0]    "index zero"
{    open/left curly bracket, curly brace
}    close/right curly bracket, curly brace
<    less than, open/left angle bracket
>    greater than, close/right angle bracket 
.    dot, period, stop
?  question mark
|    pipe, vertical bar
\    backslash
/    slash, forward slash
,    comma