note
jonadab
<blockquote>When you do, &#91; is not difficult to type, or to remember.</blockquote>
<p>I want to live in your universe.</p>
<p>When I was an Initiate (and a Novice, and an
Acolyte...), I kept &#91; on my scratchpad,
so that I had an easy way to find
it. However, I discovered that however I put it,
it would either be visible when I viewed my
scratchpad in a textedit box, or else it would
be visible when I viewed it the regular way. So
I put it both ways (with the ampersand escaped or
not). I was hoping that eventually I would just
remember it, but I keep getting it confused with
the entity for single quote (which I *have* to
remember, for non-Perl work-related reasons),
confusing it with other random ASCII character
numbers, and otherwise mixing it up and getting it
wrong. So I had to consult my scratchpad for the
correct number nearly every time.
</p>
<p>
Eventually I needed my
scratchpad for something else, so I gave up and
started putting the left square bracket in code
tags, which was so much easier (not having to
consult my scratchpad every time I post anything)
that I instantly became addicted to it. This
is where I stood until this thread; now I have
arranged to have the entity in my signature for
easy reference :-)
</p>
<p>
If there were an easy pseudoentity for it, such
as &lbracket;, I would use that instead. Or
maybe *eventually* I'll memorize the numerical
code for left square bracket, but with all the other
ASCII codes floating around in my head for one
reason or another, that one has a tendency to get
lost.
<readmore>I know what space and carriage return and
linefeed are decimal and hex. In decimal I also
know what double quote is, and single quote, and
tab, BEL, and the letter a. I can never seem to
remember A though, and I always have to work out z
by adding to a. The left square bracket I have
rememorized probably tweny times (every single time
just for PerlMonks; it is not a character that there
is *normally* a reason to memorize), but it always
gets lost again.</readmore>
I guess I don't use it quite often enough. Plus,
numbers are much harder for me to remember than words.
</p>
<p>The real problem with escaping the left square bracket,
though, is for newbies. The entity for it is (not
surprisingly) not on *any* of the usual lists of
HTML entities. It's not on the htmlhelp.com lists,
not on the w3schools lists, nowhere. Nor is it
documented in the FAQ here. You've got to drag out
an ASCII chart. This is not newbie-friendly.
<strong>update:</strong>Hmmm... It *is* listed
in the "how to escape" thingy that's linked from
preview, though; how come I never noticed that
before? I could have saved myself all that messing
around with my scratch pad.
</p>
<div class="pmsig">
<div class="pmsig-230012">
<hr />
<tt>;$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}</tt>
<tt>split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$;[-1]->();print</tt>
</div></div>
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