this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2025
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I still don't get why the backslash is on keyboards to begin with. I don't think I've ever seen anyone write a slash backward with a pen. And even if folks do, you could've had only one slash anyways. Like, people are going to understand what it means, whether it's
/
or\
.I guess, it not being used for much else, does at least make it useful for escaping stuff and for Windows to use as path separator.
It seems not to have much pre-computer history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backslash#History
Only time I've ever used \ in a non computer context was in mathematics as "without" in set theory. As an escape character it's pretty practical too :)
Stop saying that, it has it's uses /;_;\