
Proposal: "{" and "}" to be known as openstache, closestache - apgwoz
http://fold.sigusr2.net/2010/03/mustache.html
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dboyd
With apologies for dampening the mood of the original post...

    
    
      () == paranetheses
      [] == brackets
      {} == braces
    

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket>

~~~
acangiano
In Italian, we qualify them by their shape:

    
    
        () == parentesi tonde (round)
        [] == parentesi quadre (squared)
        {} == parentesi graffe (claws)

~~~
alextgordon
In British English it's much the same:

    
    
      () == "round brackets" or usually just "brackets"
      [] == "square brackets"
      {} == "curly brackets" or "braces"

~~~
code_devil
I grew up in India and am familiar with this, used to always wonder if I was
wrong and why i often get confused when people say parentheses instead of
brackets.(I have been in the US since the last 10 years)

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DanielStraight
I vote yes. I already say upscalator and downscalator to distinguish between
the two types of escalators. This is equally quirky and useful. I like it.

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enntwo
Do you refer to the long flat ones at airports as lateralscalators,
forwardscalators, or orthangonalscalators?

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shaunxcode
I think we can both agree that frontscalator makes more sense.

~~~
jodrellblank
I think transcalator fits together more nicely.

(Edit: or maybe flatscalator)

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isleyaardvark
I think parallelscalator has a nice ring to it.

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ramchip
Some are concurrent, but hardly all of them!

~~~
jodrellblank
Since you must go on one then the next: serialscalators?

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beagle3
No no no! For the love of $(DIETY), don't call them openstache and
closestache, but rather leftstache and rightstache.

While there isn't a difference in left-to-right language, those of us
unfortunate enough to have to support right-to-left languages need a
nontrivial algorithm to decide whether openstache is actually a leftstache or
a rightstache (because the grpahic form of the character is that of a
leftstache, independent of directionality, rather than openstache, which
mirrors based on directionality)

~~~
roundsquare
I'm curious... do people who read right to left languages code that way as
well?

} (y = x)fi ;("!dlrow olleH")nltirp.tuo.metsyS {

How about top to bottom languages? (Not doing that one out).

~~~
beagle3
There is (AFAIK) one programming language that is RTL -- a variation on Basic
which has been dead for about 15 years now.

The open-paren / left-paren problem is there even in e.g. Word, explictly
_because_ it's considered open-paren rather than left-paren; When you type
'alif' (arabic 'a' equiv) 'ba' (arabic 'b' equiv) shift-9 (left paren), you
get ')' 'ba' 'alif' . but if you type 'a' 'b' shift-9, you get 'ab('. if you
insert a different directionality character immediately in fromt of the open-
paren, the paren will be flip.

The rules for flipping parens are specified in the Unicode standard, and are
extremely nontrivial and nonintuitive (both for implementing and for using --
it's often hard to get the kind of character you want!).

And it all exists because some idiot thinking "abstraction! It is an open-or-
close that the person means, not the left-or-right!" was sitting in the
committees making the decisions; There _was_ dissenting opinion, giving
exactly the example I gave above, but abstraction was deemed way more
important than usability.

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JoshTriplett
Strange names for characters can help when they significantly shorten, such as
"bang" versus "exclamation" (though in context I'd prefer "not" when it has
that meaning).

However, "stache" doesn't shorten "brace"; both of them have one syllable, and
the latter even has fewer letters if you have to type it. So, this seems
unhelpful except as a joke.

On the other hand, we could use a good joke name for {}, to go along with
"octothorpe" (#), "twiddle" (~), and "ampersand" (&). :)

"brace", "bracket", "paren": {} [] ()

Or, if you really feel like disambiguating, "curly brace", "square bracket",
"parenthesis": {} [] ()

~~~
Oompa
How is ampersand a joke name?

~~~
asolove
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand>

~~~
RyanMcGreal
The etymology [1] does not suggest a joke origination.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand#Etymology>

~~~
Vindexus
Through folk etymology, it has been claimed that André-Marie Ampère used the
symbol in his widely read publications, and that people began calling the new
shape "Ampere's and". [3]

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bmalicoat
I use open-curly/close-curly and never had a problem being understood. Add
bracket if someone really isn't getting it.

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brent
I'm not Danish, but on their behalf I'd like to note that these are called
Tuborgs after the beer company. Apparently their delivery trucks had a profile
that looked like the braces.

~~~
laut
You're on to something: in my math classes they would often be referred too as
a "væltet Turborg". Which means a "fallen down Tuborg" ie. it's turned on the
side. The profile can be seen on the roof of this truck: <http://www.mc-
barskk.dk/images/Tuborg_Julebryg.jpg>

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sh1mmer
Surely, this should be known as "}": handlebars and "{ pornstar".

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duck
Looks like openstache.com was registered today:
[http://who.godaddy.com/WhoIsVerify.aspx?domain=openstache.co...](http://who.godaddy.com/WhoIsVerify.aspx?domain=openstache.com&prog_id=godaddy)

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IgorPartola
Let's do some quantum mechanics with the bra ket notation:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bra-ket_notation>

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paulhart
LTACHE and RTACHE is a lot less to type, and has some consistency with LPAREN
and RPAREN which I recall from "back in the day" when I was at university and
learning about lexers and parsers (go dragon book!).

~~~
jcl
LBRACE and RBRACE take the same amount of time to type and are standard
nomenclature in lexers/parsers.

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Xichekolas
What's wrong with 'open brace'/'close brace'? Same amount of effort to say.

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jodrellblank
Drop the s'es; Opentache and closetache is more pronounceable.

~~~
JoshTriplett
One problem "stache" already has, which "tache" exacerbates: they sound too
much like "dash". While "open dash" and "close dash" don't really make sense,
that doesn't prevent them from adding to the confusion.

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Salvatore
In Latin:

    
    
      () == arcus
      [] == quadrum
      {} == torquendum
    

However, this terminology hasn't been used since the Romans first programmed
"SalveMundus.for"...

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aristus
I made a field guide to brackets a while back:

<http://carlos.bueno.org/brackets-of-the-world.pdf>

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borga
In Portuguese they are called "keys", so you just use open-key and close-key,
but I understand that that in English would be confusing.

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rglullis
That's a bad, literal translation of how it's called in Portuguese. "Keys" can
be translated to "chaves" or "teclas".

Anyway, I don't get this, just as a joke. "Parenthesis", "Brackets" and
"Braces" do just fine, thank you very much.

() Parenthesis => Parêntesis [] Brackets => Colchetes {} Braces => Chaves

~~~
borga
Hardly bad, literal yes, almost. 'Chaves' (keys, braces, staches in the post's
joke) really come from the mathematical term 'chaveta', a punctuation, symbol
that serves as a opening and closure in mathematical terms, hence the term as
a key and not as brace (what would be better translated as braçadeira).

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jimfl

      { = "woo woo"
      } = "nyuk nyuk"

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FlorinAndrei
opstache

clostache

Shorter this way.

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scotty79
ostache, clostache sounds funnier

