Forward Slash Vs Backslash

As the age of information technology exploded, many new specialized fields opened up giving rise to new technological jargon as English language fell short of adequate words to describe everything. This new lingo involved the usage of symbols for communication and computer programming. That is where the forward slash and backslash came in. Computer languages were designed to communicate with desktop computers and therefore brevity in language was essential as it made programming simpler. That is why symbols like the forward slash and backslash, which were sparsely used before, found employment! The forward slash vs backslash comparison that I make here will clarify the nuances of their usage in computing and on the Internet.

Forward Slash Vs Backslash: History
The forward slash or slash as it is known is a widely used punctuation mark, denoted by the symbol - '/', and the backslash is denoted by the symbol '\'. Let us see the history of usage of these two symbols.

The usage of slash or forward slash dates back to the period of Ancient Rome (more than 2000 years ago), where it was part of the then prevalent scripts. Especially the Fraktur script, which was widely used throughout Europe during the middle ages, employed the slash as a 'comma'. It served the function equivalent of a comma in the English language today. Two slashes in succession (//) meant a dash (-), which later evolved into the 'equal to (=)' sign used in mathematics. Since then the role of the slash was sidelined in language serving a small purpose, till the dawn of the information age, where it was back in vogue!

Compared to the usage history connected with forward slash, the backslash is a very recent addition. It is known by various names in the computing world which include 'escape', 'hack', 'reverse solidus', 'slosh', 'whack', 'backslant' and 'backslat'.

The backslash (\) was introduced as a symbol in computing by the computer scientist Bob Bemer in 1961. He included it in the ASCII (American Standard Code For Information Interchange) set of characters to represent certain Boolean operators of the ALGOL language.

Forward Slash Vs Backslash: Keyboard Position
Now that both backslash and forward slash are widely used, they were made a part of the standard ASCII computer keyboard. The backslash is placed just below the backspace key while the forward slash key is located on the immediate left of the shift key placed on the right side.

Forward Slash vs Backslash: Usage in Language Text
In the English language, the forward slash is extensively used as a connector between two words, either meaning 'and' or 'or'. Sometimes it is also used in place of the 'hyphen (-)' to indicate a strong connection between words. It is also used to indicate line break while quoting lines from a poem. While proofreading, the forward slash is used as a separatix to separate correction comments made in the margin. In mathematics, it used as a division or modulo sign. It is also used to separate the components of a date written as 'dd/mm/yy'.

Compared to the slash, the backslash finds no application in English text and its restricted to use in computing.

Forward Slash Vs Backslash: Applications In Programming and Computing
Both these symbols have wide range of uses in programming and computing. The forward slash is used in Unix and Linux based systems in specifying the file path name and separating the directory from sub file components. For example, a file path in a Unix based system will look like: 'Documents/ User/ filename'. As opposed to this, Windows based systems on the other hand, use the backslash in their file path specifications. A typical file path in Windows will look like 'Documents\ User \ file name'.

The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or web page address uses the forward slash in specifying the path of access to a web page. For example, a typical address will look like 'http://www.buzzle.com/'. Forward slash is also used in specifying the command line options in Microsoft Windows.

Let us have a look at usage of forward slash and backslash in C. The forward slash is used in C, C++, C#, CSS, PHP and even Javascript to indicate a comment in programming code. Anything placed between '/*' and '*/' is a comment. Other than that, forward slash is used as a division operator in most programming languages including C.

Backslash is used in C, Perl and Unix scripting. It is specified before characters to indicate special treatment. In TeX typesetting system, it is used to begin the various mark up tags used, to identify them differently.

If you look for usage of forward slash and backslash in HTML, then you won't find use of the latter but the former is widely used. The closing HTML tags have a forward slash indicating the end of application of the specified formatting.

So, this was a forward slash vs backslash comparison which has hopefully cleared your confusion regarding the usage of these symbols. The advances in technology will see the development of even stranger forms of symbolism and jargon in use. To keep up with this rapid pace of change, you have to keep on updating your knowledge.