玉面飞龙的BLOG

It’s my favorite and told by Yong Huang.

a list of the “special” characters and their common pronunciations

~ tilde (sounds like til-da); be prepared to explain to computer-illiterate people saying “you know, the wave-shaped thingy”

! exclamation; commonly read as bang in case of #!/bin/sh

@ at

# pound; but commonly read as shee in case of #!/bin/sh, not sure why

$ dollar

% percent

^ caret; not many people know this word so be prepared to say “no, not carrot; it’s the character above 6, an arrow pointing up”

& ampersand

* star; some read asterisk

( opening parenthesis (some may shorten it saying paren)

) closing parenthesis

_ underscore; once I heard people say underbar

+ plus

- minus; as symbol before arguments in commands, some people including me read dash, easier to say one syllable

= equals

` backtick or backquote

{ opening brace

} closing brace

[ opening bracket

] closing bracket

| pipe or vertical bar

\ backslash; be prepared to explain to some computer-illiterate people

: colon

; semicolon

” double quote

‘ single quote

< less than; some may read left angle bracket

> greater than

, comma

. dot; period if in English text

? question mark

/ slash or forward slash; some computer-illiterate people may be confused about / and \

space

(), [] and {} may also be called brackets in general. In that case, they specifically call [] square brackets and {} curly brackets. I never like this. Open and Closing may also be called left and right.

Yong Huang