OK, what I’ve always considered a “slash” (well, a virgule, but still) goes like this: /
So, is the new name for it (in computer-speak) a “backslash” or a “forward slash”? To me, either (or neither) makes sense, and I’ve heard people say it both ways. On a radio ad today, it was said that “blah-blah-blah dot blah-blah-blah backslash” was the address. I tried it, and it was the / mark. When making this mark by hand, one does go “back,” assuming one (like everyone I’ve ever seen) starts with the pen in the upper right position. It then goes “back and to the left.” [No second shooter jokes!] But if you read naturally from left to right, the mark goes forward, not back, so calling it a “forward slash” works too. To me, since the / is the “default” slash, it should be the one that gets to be called “forward,” no? Then this thing ( \ ) gets to be the opposite, or backslash.
So which is correct? And is there a more formal name for the \ , like “virgule” for the / ?
(Our stupid joke in high school, after being told that / is a virgule, not a “slash,” was to call the guitarist for Guns and Roses “Virgule” for the rest of the year. Stupid, I know.)
Any mention of a “backslash” in a URL is due to gross ineptitude.
/ = slash
\ = backslash.
It’s called a backslash because it’s a slash backwards.
To make matters worse, some web clients will accept backslashes where slashes are supposed to be and change them for you, encouraging people to not learn the difference. (Not to mention Microsoft’s hair-brained scheme of using backslashes as directory seperators.)
Heck, I’ve had people say to me “www dot blah dot com backslash whatever”, and when I verbally repeat it back while correcting them ("… dot com SLASH DAMMIT…"), they still don’t get it.
I can do this for hours, and I don’t know if they just don’t understand that there are two slashes on a keyboard or what.
IIRC the first version of DOS didn’t have directories. Also, DOS’s command syntax was lifted from CP/M, which also didn’t have directories. CP/M used the slash (/) to mark command-line switches, so DOS did likewise. When directories were introduced later, they didn’t want to overload the slash (/), so they used the backslash () as the most reasonable substitute.
I wonder if the people who get slash and backslash confused are the same people who get horizontal and vertical exactly ass-backward.
Manduck, you could very well be right about the CP/M connection. I don’t really know much about DOS’s history. But it’s still inexcusable to replace such a common ideogram with something so similar as to cause confusion for generations.
Every time I’ve been on the phone with a Microsoft engineer they’ve called it a “whack”. As in “whack whack server whack share” when discussing a UNC path.
