

The Meaning Of Life for C Programmers - derrida
http://jones.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/why-42-is-the-meaning-of-life-the-universe-and-everything/

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xentronium
Nah, that's just lame. It would "make sense" with whatever character that
would happen to be.

Space? Makes sense.

New line? Makes sense.

Hash. Certainly does make sense.

~~~
burgerbrain
'*' is commonly used in globbing schemes to represent everything/anything. To
my knowledge neither spaces, newlines, nor hashes also are.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Glob_%28progr...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Glob_%28programming%29)

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dexen
This is C programming language we're talking about, right? The `*' asterisk
stands pointers in C: both defining and dereferencing 'em. In a way, the free
access to pointers is (a large portion of) the meaning of C -- and, by
extension, C programmers' lifes.

Anyway, a nice joke ;-)

~~~
burgerbrain
Eh, of all the possible contexts that '*' could be interpreted as having
significant meaning, I'd definitely say unix name globbing comes before
pointers in C.

(though I also think interpreting '42' as an ascii sequence is looking for
something where there is nothing...)

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teilo
More plausible theory:

1 digit is to simple. 3 is too many. 2 is about right. Something non-prime of
course, but with three prime factors. 42 is nice. Rolls off the tongue, and
ends in "ooo".

