Symbol pronunciation (Re: awk comments)

[Robert Coren]

In article <1991Apr30.085700.10664 at grep.co.uk>, vic at grep.co.uk (Victor Gavin) writes:
|> In article <3896 at dali> icsu7039 at attila.cs.montana.edu (Spannring) writes:
|> >>In article <6188 at flint4.UUCP>, tang at motcid.UUCP (Sam D. Tang) writes:
|> >> How does one add comments to an awk program?
|> >You use the pound sign (#) for a comment.
|> 
|> This hasn't been mentioned for a while so thought I'd resurrect it.
|> 
|> The # has several ``names''. Octothorpe, pound, mesh, hash are just a few.
|> 
|> Octothorpe was invented by AT&T so we can ignore that.

Never heard this in my life. What on earth is its derivations?

"Number sign" is the earliest one I remember. I always preferred
"sharp" myself.

|> 
|> The naming of symbols is probably a religious issue (like the
|> pronunciation of char: is it the base of the word `character' or
|> is it like the word char, as in lightly burn a something).
|> 

And is _ pronounced "underscore", "underbar", or "underline"? Or just
"under"?
	Robert