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Why is - and -- used as a switch character if it is used in dates (and even quite common in normal text, names) Those uses rarely have it next to whitespace, a
by celoyd 15y ago
Why is - and -- used as a switch character if it is used in dates (and even quite common in normal text, names)
Those uses rarely have it next to whitespace, and almost never immediately after whitespace.
If someone’s named Jean-Claude, it is not customary to refer to them as -Claude for short, and if I refer to items dated 2012-03-19 and 2012-03-20, it is not customary to call one of them -20.
But that last example shows something that Unixy switches do conflict with: negative numbers.
- darklajid 15y agoWell responded. Two (not entirely serious) counterarguments: - Lists like this - Abusing the char as em-dash - Weird languages. In German it's quite common to use that character to shorten the monster words. Pulling samples from my reared (note the disclaimer about being not to serious) Lebens- und Krankenversicherung (Shorthand for Lebensversicherung und Krankenversicherung) The inverse is possible, but less common as far as I am aware Arbeitsplatz und -Umfeld (Arbeitsplatz und Arbeitsumfeld?) Looks ugly to me and the samples are pre-coffee, but this is definitely possible.
- celoyd 15y agoAll good points. I would say that lists like that are also abuse; the hyphens there ought to be · or something similar. But it certainly appears in the wild. (Similarly, in formal contexts, the negative sign is − and not -, but very few people care.) The last usage is also possible in English. A construction like “face-huggers and -eaters” is rare but not outlandish.