4 ms·

'*' is commonly used in globbing schemes to represent everything/anything. To my knowledge neither spaces, newlines, nor hashes also are. https://secure.wikim

• dexen 16y ago
  This is C programming language we're talking about, right? The `*' asterisk stands pointers in C: both defining and dereferencing 'em. In a way, the free access to pointers is (a large portion of) the meaning of C -- and, by extension, C programmers' lifes. Anyway, a nice joke ;-)
  • burgerbrain 16y ago
    Eh, of all the possible contexts that '*' could be interpreted as having significant meaning, I'd definitely say unix name globbing comes before pointers in C. (though I also think interpreting '42' as an ascii sequence is looking for something where there is nothing...)