9 Jul
2016
9 Jul
'16
9:59 p.m.
Doug McIlroy scripsit:
This is sheer hypothesis, but I have always thought
that \ got
onto printer chains and type balls as a crude drawing aid. Ditto
for |. Once the characters became available people began to find
uses for them.
<http://www.bobbemer.com/BACSLASH.HTM> tells us that \ was introduced
into ASCII by Bob Bemer in order to make \/ for 'or' and /\ for 'and'
available, primarily for the use of Algol 60. It had not been available
in any manufacturer's character set before ASCII-63, as far as is known.
Unfortunately, none of the five existing Algol 60 implementations actually
support these sequences.
| was commonplace, however, as it has at least 15 mathematical uses:
see <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_bar#Mathematics>.
As far as I know, it has always been used as 'or' on computers.
--
John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan(a)ccil.org
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarves.
--Murray Gell-Mann