help resolve the "discussion" of coders naming of the "-" character
 

hey guys,

we have a little "discussion" among coder types for the proper name of the "-" character, the character between the 0 and the = keys.

not in an English language context, not in a military context, but in a pure coding context what is the name of the "-"

a few possibilities: "dash" or "hyphen" others?

Usually "dash"

Every programmer I have worked with has called it, "minus".

so not in a math context, which i agree would be "minus" but in a coding context, like how the professor would reference that character in computer programming 101

dash, hyphen, tac (sp?) (on some podcasts anyway), minus, and probably others.

When talking about command line arguments, eg "ls -a", it's always been "dash" for me.

Although if you're a programmer you're more likely to call it:

45 \055 %2D 0x2D 00101011

Which is it's ascii value in decimal, octal, html, hex, binary, ... ... ... And if you're a mainframe programmer you probably know it's ebcdic designation (0x60 / 96).

I doubt there is a single universal term.

I would suggest that you decide among members of your discussion group the definitive term for use within the group. You cannot decide for others outside the group.

Having been a professor who taught courses one might call Computer Programming 101 (we called ours 103; not sure why), I always called it the minus sign. After all, it is adjacent to the plus sign.

In the great scheme of things does really matter? If I say "dash", "hyphen" or "minus" you know what I'm refering to, and the context of the sentence should tell you if I'm using the term as a math term or somthing else.

The different names provide context about the use of the symbol.
a = b - c is a subtraction, so "minus".
version="0.1-alpha" is a string. so "dash".
line1="This is a long line that needs hyphenat-"
line2="ing to avoid truncation.", so "hyphen".
The symbol is often used as an empty value indicator in tables
value[1]=1
value[2]="-"
value[3]=3

- can be stdin, pronounced: standard input ;)
silent maybe in 4-Apr-2018 or linux 4.14-rc6

http://punctuationmatters.com/the-di...d-a-minus-sign
https://jakubmarian.com/hyphen-minus...age-in-english

not necessarily. those can be different characters on a computer.
if you want to make absolutely sure, in a verbal conversation, you should say 'minus'. i do.

I always say "minus", especially when describing arguments to shell commands, e.g. "minus minus version". I often have to explain Linux commands to people and I found that they understand the "minus" instantly whereas when I say "dash" or "hyphen" they often confuse it with some other character.

thanks for all your thoughts

close -now