From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,52921ff59f662931 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: John Walker Subject: Re: the term "pound sign" (was: help: character to integer) Date: 1996/10/17 Message-ID: <199610171357.NAA13045@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 190180291 sender: Ada programming language comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-10-17T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: On Wed, 16 Oct 1996 09:04:44 -0400, Robert Dewar wrote: >Well I must say that at first it seemed quite credible that this was indeed >an old term, but the failure of anyone to come up with other than the most >dubious scraps of anecdotal evidence is puzzling ... Don't nobody got no symbol dictionaries? :) *Moi*'s memory leans vaguely to the (#=pound)=old side, but I wonder whether the usage was blue-collar: stock clerks rather than bookkeepers. One tilt in the (#=pound)=new direction is that the 1909 Webster's shows # as only the number sign. Class bias? :) But c'mon, somebody gotta got a symbol dictionary! take care, John --------------------------------------------------- walkerj@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us Assembler is a high-level language. .GET DSCLAIMR.STD ; and ponder the implications of insertion points ---------------------------------------------------