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"~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by The Call of the Wendigo Sun May 01, 2022 6:39 pm
Does anyone actually know what the "~" symbol is for?
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by SiberianPrincess’sMidriff Sun May 01, 2022 6:40 pm
§
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by Nightjar Sun May 01, 2022 6:41 pm
The Call of the Wendigo wrote:Does anyone actually know what the "~" symbol is for?
It's a tilde.
In Spanish and Portuguese it goes over letters like N to make a "nya" sound.
It has some other science/mathsy uses too.
Last edited by Nightjar on Sun May 01, 2022 6:44 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by The Call of the Wendigo Sun May 01, 2022 6:42 pm
That doesn't tell me what it's for.Nightjar wrote:The Call of the Wendigo wrote:Does anyone actually know what the "~" symbol is for?
It's a tilde.
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by Nightjar Sun May 01, 2022 6:42 pm
See above.
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by Nightjar Sun May 01, 2022 6:43 pm
As a mathematical symbol, the tilde means "approximately" and in logic it means "not."
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by Fangirl Three Mon May 02, 2022 7:38 am
~ is often used as an alternative to the proper approximation symbol ≈ because ≈ is so bloody hard to get on Windows. I had to look at 6 different websites to find one to copy for this post.
Sometimes you see it next to an AC voltage to indicate that it's AC not DC, presumably because it looks like a little sine wave.
In computing it can be the bitwise complement operator, which flips all the bits of its operand.
eg 6 is 00000110 binary and ~6 is 11111001 binary, or 249 decimal.
In Perl it's part of the equals-wobbly operator for regular expressions:
if ("Wendi" =~ m/W.ndi/) { print "Wendi matches"; }
I love to explain symbols so will be happy to discourse on any others that have excited your curiosity.
Sometimes you see it next to an AC voltage to indicate that it's AC not DC, presumably because it looks like a little sine wave.
In computing it can be the bitwise complement operator, which flips all the bits of its operand.
eg 6 is 00000110 binary and ~6 is 11111001 binary, or 249 decimal.
In Perl it's part of the equals-wobbly operator for regular expressions:
if ("Wendi" =~ m/W.ndi/) { print "Wendi matches"; }
I love to explain symbols so will be happy to discourse on any others that have excited your curiosity.
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by The Call of the Wendigo Mon May 02, 2022 8:45 am
Thank you, Fangy. That is a very in-depth explanation. 
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by SiberianPrincess’sMidriff Mon May 02, 2022 8:55 am
alt + x
≈
≈
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by SiberianPrincess’sMidriff Mon May 02, 2022 8:57 am
I like the reason ~ = root of the home directory on Unix/Linux style OSs, it was on the same key as 'home' 
Last edited by SiberianPrincess’sMidriff on Mon May 02, 2022 9:01 am; edited 1 time in total
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by SiberianPrincess’sMidriff Mon May 02, 2022 8:57 am
I can't remember what 'Home' did, did it put the cursor at the top left of the screen or something?
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by Fangirl Three Mon May 02, 2022 3:36 pm
ISTR it did something other than what I wanted it to. Getting flashbacks now to using Sun workstations.
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by The Call of the Wendigo Thu May 12, 2022 9:35 am
⍼ - Why Nobody Knows What This One Unicode Character Means.
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by Fangirl Three Thu May 12, 2022 1:39 pm
I don't recognise any of the adjacent ones either. That must be a very wild, lonely part of the Unicode table.
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by SiberianPrincess’sMidriff Thu May 12, 2022 1:55 pm
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by Nightjar Thu May 12, 2022 2:47 pm
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Re: "~" and other mystery keyboard symbols
by Fangirl Three Thu May 12, 2022 3:05 pm
'Bell Symbol'
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