What I Learned Today

Courtesy of Brett Terpstra’s tweet this evening I learned about the hashbang.

Hashbang: (n): First line of a script. Composed of the Hash, aka pound or number sign (”#”), followed by the Bang, aka exclamation mark (”!”), followed by the path to the script interpreter. Usually found in scripts running on unix-based systems ¹.

For example:

#!/bin/sh
echo "Hashbang would make a great weblog title.";
# The rest of the shell script.
# ...

Now all this is rather mundane to me, but hashbang sounds like a dirty word, as Brett points out, and this fact does excite me. I still find farts funny so a new dirty word to toss in the bullpen leaves me feeling full and joyous.

So what I (re)learned today is not necessarily a new dirty word as the learning of a new dirty word precipitated the realization that getting off on childish and silly notions is a good place to visit from time to time ².

1. Definition via. ↩
2. Cause really one definition of hashbang is like crazy, wild sex right. I think the word works best as a title because it comes off strong and is obviously not keen on neighbors, but the connotations are dripping sexuality. ↩

November 20 2008 10:20:49 PM EST