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'@' was used to mean 'at' or 'each' for a long time before email addresses. Often in pricing. '12 @ $3' means twelve units priced at $3 each. It's referred to s
by cestith 6y ago
'@' was used to mean 'at' or 'each' for a long time before email addresses. Often in pricing. '12 @ $3' means twelve units priced at $3 each. It's referred to sometimes as 'commercial at', including its Unicode name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign
It was used as 'at' in computing in Algol 68 where it was a shorthand for a keyword 'at'. It has a different application as 'at' in Dyalog APL.
- CydeWeys 6y agoIt wasn't remotely as familiar to a broad audience back then as it is now, though. Considering that people accept its non-idiomatic use for website user names even now (which is the same as what I'm proposing no less), I don't think this would be a problem.
- cestith 6y agoUsing your example with left-to-right domains and needing a delimiter, one could build a URL structure for mail that changes the protocol but not the path. https://com.google https://com.google. for the main page https://com.google.mail https://com.google.mail for gmail https://com.google.mail/localpart https://com.google.mail/localpart for one's own gmail account mail://com.gmail/localpart to send mail to what is currently localpart@gmail.com Alternately, we could continue to use '@' and put the localpart first. The URL method of specifying a username or username and password does this for HTTP/HTTPS. http://username:password@com.site/login http://username:password@com.site/login And currently we use mailto:localpart@example.com but we could use mailsend:localpart@com.example instead.