8 ms·
Proposal: "{" and "}" to be known as openstache, closestache
- DanielStraight 17y agoI vote yes. I already say upscalator and downscalator to distinguish between the two types of escalators. This is equally quirky and useful. I like it.
- mnemonicsloth 17y agoWow. The first time I read this, I thought you were talking about differentiating forward and back slashes. up escalator. -> _/ down escalator: \_
- enntwo 17y agoDo you refer to the long flat ones at airports as lateralscalators, forwardscalators, or orthangonalscalators?
- shaunxcode 17y agoI think we can both agree that frontscalator makes more sense.
- jodrellblank 17y agoI think transcalator fits together more nicely. (Edit: or maybe flatscalator)
- isleyaardvark 17y agoI think parallelscalator has a nice ring to it.
- ramchip 17y agoSome are concurrent, but hardly all of them!
- jodrellblank 17y agoSince you must go on one then the next: serialscalators?
- billybob 17y agoUnless you like to ride it facing the wrong way. Then it's a backscalator. Or is that the one going the other way?
- DanielStraight 17y agoI'll have to admit, I've never thought about that. I like the suggestions given so far though.
- Groxx 17y agoI sort of like orthogonalscalators, because it's huge and people seem happy to abuse "orthogonal". Plus, it brings strange things to mind when you mention that there are two or three of them in parallel...
- joebasirico 17y agoI think of the way the slash would fall if it were a pen on a desk. The forward slash would fall forward / -> the back slash would fall back \ <-
- cromulent 17y agoEscalate already means move up, but has a clumsy opposite (de-escalate, I believe). Maybe descalator and escalator would be an alternative. However, ups- and downs- is better, plus you always get points for coining new words.
- jodrellblank 17y agoDrop the s'es; Opentache and closetache is more pronounceable.
- apgwoz 17y agoI've always had a problem pronouncing s'es, but I do totally prefer the way openstache sounds compared to opentache.
- JoshTriplett 17y agoOne problem "stache" already has, which "tache" exacerbates: they sound too much like "dash". While "open dash" and "close dash" don't really make sense, that doesn't prevent them from adding to the confusion.
- bmalicoat 17y agoI use open-curly/close-curly and never had a problem being understood. Add bracket if someone really isn't getting it.
- paulhart 17y agoLTACHE and RTACHE is a lot less to type, and has some consistency with LPAREN and RPAREN which I recall from "back in the day" when I was at university and learning about lexers and parsers (go dragon book!).
- jcl 17y agoLBRACE and RBRACE take the same amount of time to type and are standard nomenclature in lexers/parsers.
- bruceboughton 17y agoAhhh, the dragon book. Probably the only book I own that is older than me.
- borga 17y agoIn Portuguese they are called "keys", so you just use open-key and close-key, but I understand that that in English would be confusing.
- rglullis 17y agoThat's a bad, literal translation of how it's called in Portuguese. "Keys" can be translated to "chaves" or "teclas". Anyway, I don't get this, just as a joke. "Parenthesis", "Brackets" and "Braces" do just fine, thank you very much. () Parenthesis => Parêntesis [] Brackets => Colchetes {} Braces => Chaves
- borga 17y agoHardly bad, literal yes, almost. 'Chaves' (keys, braces, staches in the post's joke) really come from the mathematical term 'chaveta', a punctuation, symbol that serves as a opening and closure in mathematical terms, hence the term as a key and not as brace (what would be better translated as braçadeira).
- dboyd 17y agoWith apologies for dampening the mood of the original post... () == paranetheses [] == brackets {} == braces http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket
- jcl 17y agoFor completeness, the INTERCAL standard naming convention: ( wax ) wane [ U turn ] U turn back { embrace } bracelet
- Semiapies 17y agoThus, a counter-suggestion: [ == "open-brack" ] == "close-brack"
- acangiano 17y agoIn Italian, we qualify them by their shape: () == parentesi tonde (round) [] == parentesi quadre (squared) {} == parentesi graffe (claws)
- ciupicri 17y agoIn Romanian: () == paranteze (rotunde); the "rotunde" (round) adjective is optional [] == paranteze pătrate (squared) {} == acolade (braces)
- alextgordon 17y agoIn British English it's much the same: () == "round brackets" or usually just "brackets" [] == "square brackets" {} == "curly brackets" or "braces"
- spectre 17y agoIn New Zealand: () == "round brackets" [] == "square brackets" {} == "curly brackets" <> == "pointy brackets"
- code_devil 17y ago
- JoshTriplett 17y agoStrange names for characters can help when they significantly shorten, such as "bang" versus "exclamation" (though in context I'd prefer "not" when it has that meaning). However, "stache" doesn't shorten "brace"; both of them have one syllable, and the latter even has fewer letters if you have to type it. So, this seems unhelpful except as a joke. On the other hand, we could use a good joke name for {}, to go along with "octothorpe" (#), "twiddle" (~), and "ampersand" (&). :) "brace", "bracket", "paren": {} [] () Or, if you really feel like disambiguating, "curly brace", "square bracket", "parenthesis": {} [] ()
- Oompa 17y agoHow is ampersand a joke name?
- asolove 17y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoThe etymology [1] does not suggest a joke origination. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand#Etymology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand#Etymology
- Vindexus 17y agoThrough folk etymology, it has been claimed that André-Marie Ampère used the symbol in his widely read publications, and that people began calling the new shape "Ampere's and". [3]
- JoshTriplett 17y agoTo quote the Jargon File's entry on ASCII character names <http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/a/ASCII.html> http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/a/ASCII.html>: "INTERCAL called this `ampersand'; what could be sillier?"
- brent 17y agoI'm not Danish, but on their behalf I'd like to note that these are called Tuborgs after the beer company. Apparently their delivery trucks had a profile that looked like the braces.
- jonsen 17y agoYou're right. The special cockpit canopy: http://www.brewtruck.co.uk/country/tuborg.htm http://www.brewtruck.co.uk/country/tuborg.htm
- laut 17y agoYou're on to something: in my math classes they would often be referred too as a "væltet Turborg". Which means a "fallen down Tuborg" ie. it's turned on the side. The profile can be seen on the roof of this truck: http://www.mc-barskk.dk/images/Tuborg_Julebryg.jpg http://www.mc-barskk.dk/images/Tuborg_Julebryg.jpg
- Xichekolas 17y agoWhat's wrong with 'open brace'/'close brace'? Same amount of effort to say.
- IgorPartola 17y agoLet's do some quantum mechanics with the bra ket notation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bra-ket_notation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bra-ket_notation
- FlorinAndrei 17y agoopstache clostache Shorter this way.
- scotty79 17y agoostache, clostache sounds funnier
- aristus 17y agoI made a field guide to brackets a while back: http://carlos.bueno.org/brackets-of-the-world.pdf http://carlos.bueno.org/brackets-of-the-world.pdf
- sh1mmer 17y agoSurely, this should be known as "}": handlebars and "{ pornstar".
- beagle3 17y agoNo no no! For the love of $(DIETY), don't call them openstache and closestache, but rather leftstache and rightstache. While there isn't a difference in left-to-right language, those of us unfortunate enough to have to support right-to-left languages need a nontrivial algorithm to decide whether openstache is actually a leftstache or a rightstache (because the grpahic form of the character is that of a leftstache, independent of directionality, rather than openstache, which mirrors based on directionality)
- epochwolf 17y ago-life: DIETY: command not found
- roundsquare 17y agoI'm curious... do people who read right to left languages code that way as well? } (y = x)fi ;("!dlrow olleH")nltirp.tuo.metsyS { How about top to bottom languages? (Not doing that one out).
- beagle3 17y agoThere is (AFAIK) one programming language that is RTL -- a variation on Basic which has been dead for about 15 years now. The open-paren / left-paren problem is there even in e.g. Word, explictly _because_ it's considered open-paren rather than left-paren; When you type 'alif' (arabic 'a' equiv) 'ba' (arabic 'b' equiv) shift-9 (left paren), you get ')' 'ba' 'alif' . but if you type 'a' 'b' shift-9, you get 'ab('. if you insert a different directionality character immediately in fromt of the open-paren, the paren will be flip. The rules for flipping parens are specified in the Unicode standard, and are extremely nontrivial and nonintuitive (both for implementing and for using -- it's often hard to get the kind of character you want!). And it all exists because some idiot thinking "abstraction! It is an open-or-close that the person means, not the left-or-right!" was sitting in the committees making the decisions; There _was_ dissenting opinion, giving exactly the example I gave above, but abstraction was deemed way more important than usability.
- jimfl 17y ago{ = "woo woo" } = "nyuk nyuk"
- Salvatore 17y agoIn Latin: () == arcus [] == quadrum {} == torquendum However, this terminology hasn't been used since the Romans first programmed "SalveMundus.for"...
- duck 17y agoLooks like openstache.com was registered today: http://who.godaddy.com/WhoIsVerify.aspx?domain=openstache.com&prog_id=godaddy http://who.godaddy.com/WhoIsVerify.aspx?domain=openstache.co...