Iconography - Does # imply code?

[mindlessLemming]

I have been discussing this briefly with jeskel and thought that it would be a good topic for the wider CF community.

The most common icon to include a piece of code in forums is a button with '#' (octathorpe/hash). Is this current & valid iconography? Is there a better alternative?

Personally, I feel that something like '< />' would be more indicative of code, although this obviously implies a tag/mark-up language.

Where in the history of computers does # mean code?
I know it indicates a number, or iD, but what am I missing here?

Discuss.:D

Andrew

[firepages]

# is often also a comment delimiter in code or configuration files.
I am gonna guess that its use as an icon on the web is possibly something to do with #!/usr/bin/perl which was perhaps most peoples only scripting option for a long time ?

From a pure `15,000,000 million domains can not be wrong` standpoint ;) <? could have had it , but of course XML had to have that as well innit.

a binary number may immediately bring up thoughts of code ? though who actually programs like that I couldn't say !

[me']

Why use iconography at all? That button is big enough for 'code' to be written on it, dismissing all worries.

I should also point out I've never used that button :p

[liorean]

Originally posted by me'
Why use iconography at all? That button is big enough for 'code' to be written on it, dismissing all worries.

I should also point out I've never used that button :p It's not for this forum - the forum he was talking about is a music forum... The buttons aren't exactly the same as here - they are uniformly sized, more like 20^2 in size factor.

[mindlessLemming]

Originally posted by liorean
It's not for this forum - the forum he was talking about is a music forum... The buttons aren't exactly the same as here - they are uniformly sized, more like 20^2 in size factor.

Liorean is correct, i forgot to mention that the icons are a constrained size.
However, I'm not talking about one icon in particular, I'm talking about the general use of '#' to indicate code in the major forums (vBulletin et all).

I haven't really heard any argurement for the continued use of the hash..

[liorean]

I think the largest reason is that it's standard UNIX and CGI procedure to start a script off with # followed by the address of the parser. (In environments that use # for one-line comments, such as bash, at least.) That, and the # character is little used in regular language, which surely give an indication that it must be code.

Really, what is better? < />? Why, when only SGML and XML languages uses that? Other languages use {}, [], (), ;, :, , or even indentation levels instead. Some languages use "begin" and "end". There is no uniform way of doing this - whatever you chose 'this' to mean - between langauges.

[mindlessLemming]

Thanks liorean,
I was unaware of the use of # in CGI & UNIX. I knew there had to be some reason.
I realise my suggestion '< />' is unsuitable, but I was hoping that it would be a visual indicator of XHTML etc.
David (me') was right though, the only way to ensure that coders of all languages understand it is to use the word 'code'.
Oh well,
debate over I s'pose :D
Andrew