3:40 pmToday’s posting brought to you by Jason the Programmer — who needs a little more to do with his time!
In search of an answer to this age old question, I’ve consulted numerous sources and scoured the Web. Hopefully, you’ll find this tidbit of information as useful as I have. The difference between the forward slash and the backslash is as follows:
/ = the forward slash leans forward
\ = the backslash leans back
That’s it. Wow. That was complicated!
For Average Joes and Janes like myself, that’s all you really need to know — because we really only use slashes when typing in website URL’s. And, yes, I did casually say “slashes” because most of us regular users only know where one slash is, anyway. It shares a key with the question mark.
FREE Social Tech Tip #1 – When giving out a website address in conversation, leave off the colon and forward slashes that happen before the dot-com. Mentioning them just sounds silly.
As an example, here’s something we’ve all heard before: Some know-it-all-type (trying to sound smarter than they actually are) wants to give you the address to a website that you’ve not yet graced with your presence. It sounds something like this: “Just go to http-colon-backslash-backslash www dot blah-blah-blah dot com…” Before you even hear the site address, you’re bored. What on earth would make you want to go there?
Don’t be this person.
FREE Social Tech Tip #2 – If you’re referring somebody to a website that has forward slashes AFTER the dot-com, just call them slashes. People are smart enough to know what you mean [and even if they aren't, they'll probably use the one under their pinky finger anyway.]
Q. So, if Average Joes really only use the forward slash, what’s the other one for?
A. Only Programmers, really. This is probably why Jason recommended this post in the first place.
Backslashes are mainly used in computing, and have a more limited and technical use than the slash:
- They can act as a path delimiter in Windows path names (C:\Program Files\Adobe Photoshop).
- or - - As escaping characters in most C-style languages, including C, C++, PHP, Perl, and also on most UNIX shells ().
More likely than not, if you’re reading this, you don’t use backslashes very often, either. It’s ok. We can’t all write code for a living ;) otherwise, there would be no one to write our UnCorporate Blog.
Well, there it is! The difference between Forward Slash and Backslash! Hope it helps. Blogging isn’t all wa do here at Dynamic Edge, Inc. Click Here to poke around our website.
May 6th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Some other suggestions:
1) / can be referred to as whack…so instead of saying forward slash forward slash, just say whack. It’s cuter and makes you look more techy
2) Instead of saying “double u, double u, double” say “dub dub dub” – it’s shorter.
“H T T P Colon whack whack dub dub dub” is shorter then
“H T T P Colon forward slash forward slash double u double u double u”
Another reason to be bored with “http-colon-backslash-backslash www dot blah-blah-blah dot com” — the backslash is wrong, it’s forward slash. Backslashs, as the blog writer said, is really for programming, windows directory access, maybe in literature, and some other misc. crap that we don’t use 99.9% of our lives
June 18th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Confusion comes from writing. When this “/” is written you start at the top and slash backwards agains the grain in American English. (All our letters start from the left or top and go in a down or right direction.) So when you write “/” you are backslashing. Same goes for “\”. You are forward slashing.
From memory, that is what they were called before typing came into being. Then it all switched around.
July 29th, 2011 at 11:10 am
good background, but why do you occassionally see ///c:\