Talk:Sigil (computer programming): Difference between revisions

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==Talk==

"In the PHP language, which was largely inspired by Perl" <--- uhh, what? I can't see any resemblence between PHP or Perl...

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== Shell scripting, operator or not? ==

This page is confused as to whether shell scripting's '$' is a sigil or an operator. Historical context says "Larry Wall adopted shell scripting's use of sigils for his Perl programming language." but Similar phenomenon says "In Unix shell scripting and in utilities such as Makefiles, the "$" is a unary operator that translates the name of a variable into its contents. While this may seem similar to a sigil, it is properly a unary operator for lexical indirection, similar to the * indirection operator for pointers in C, as noticeable from the fact that the dollar sign is omitted when assigning to a variable." <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">— Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[Special:Contributions/68.227.46.192|68.227.46.192]] ([[User talk:68.227.46.192|talk]]) 03:49, 12 December 2013‎ (UTC)</span><!-- Template:Unsigned IP -->

: Yes, the $ operator is not a sygilsigil. It means "what follows is special expansion syntax". Variables do not inherently have sygils. Witness:

<pre>

FOO=123 # no "sygilsigil" in assignment

export FOO # none here either

unset FOO # nor here

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VAR=$(ls -l) # $(...) denotes process expansion

</pre>

: The <code>$</code> character is not some superfluous sygilsigil, but a necessary escape which indicates that what follows has special meaning. This allows most of a shell command line to be literal text that is minimally processed by breaking into words.

[[Special:Contributions/24.85.131.247|24.85.131.247]] ([[User talk:24.85.131.247|talk]]) 05:46, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

== Nonsense about Lisp ==

In the "earmuffs" convention, the asterisks do not '''surround''' a variable name in any sense. They are '''part of the symbol name'''. They are not a sygilsigil any more than <code>C</code> is a sygil onsigilon class names in the Microsoft Foundation Classes or ATL, or <code>_t</code> is a sygilsigil in some C typedef names.

Look:

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</pre>

The name of the <code>*standard-output*</code> symbol is the character string <code>"*STANDARD-OUTPUT*"</code>, asterisks and all.

The first paragraph of the article makes it clear that sigil is "attached to" a name. Something part of a name isn't attached to a name.

[[Special:Contributions/24.85.131.247|24.85.131.247]] ([[User talk:24.85.131.247|talk]]) 05:50, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

== Origin of BASIC's $ sigil? ==

I know that Darthmouth BASIC didn't support strings at all, and Microsoft's Altair BASIC used the $. In between, I know nothing. Does anyone know if it was Microsoft that originated this feature?

[[Special:Contributions/147.0.139.66|147.0.139.66]] ([[User talk:147.0.139.66|talk]]) 15:11, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

== Hungarian notation is NOT a convention for variable-naming that specifies variable type ==

Regarding:

: ... is Hungarian notation, a convention for variable-naming that specifies variable type ...

No, that is the gross [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/05/11/making-wrong-code-look-wrong/ misinterpretation by Microsoft documentation writers] (near ''"inadvertently invented what came to be known as Systems Hungarian"''), not at all what the inventor had in mind (explicitly stated several times in the original paper).

See also 04 mins 00 secs - 06 mins 35 secs in [https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/277 Triangulation 277].

--[[User:Mortense|Mortense]] ([[User talk:Mortense|talk]]) 21:17, 7 November 2018 (UTC)