[Tutor] How can I escape a pound symbol in my script?

[Alan Gauld]

"Kent Johnson" <kent37 at tds.net> wrote

> > is of course an historical feature of old keyboards
> > when, to get a hash symbol (#), you had to type a
> > pound sign(£), ie shift 3.
>
> That is a very interesting explanation but I prefer this one:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign#Naming_convention_within_the_USA
>
> # is an abbreviation for 'pound' the weight, not 'pound' the unit
> of currency.

Interesting indeed. I got my explanation in high school around 1972.
It went like this....
The pound and the dollar were the main currencies in use when 
Remington
introduced the QWERTY keyboard on their early typewriters. The pound 
sign
was Shift-3 and the dollar shift-4. When the US introduced the # 
symbol
(in the early 1920's?) to keyboards they used the pound sign position
(because the pound had decreased in usage by then) and the symbol
was called the pound sign because that was what was traditionally on
the key used.

The symbol is called hash is the UK because its derived from
the more term cross-hatch, where the symbol is like the cross
hatching used for shading when sketching, which in turn is often
called hatching.

And that was part of our Modern History class and was examinable! :-)

An alternative explanation for hash that I've seen is that it relates
to cooking where a hash is a meal composed of ingredients cut
into cubes and the symbol is remminiscent of the cut lines made
when cubing (or hashing) the meat etc.

> Of course the correct name for this symbol is 'octothorpe' :-)
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Octothorpe

That I would query, the article says the Bell labs folks claim to have 
coined
the term in 1964 but the symbol has been in use for at least a hundred
years. Although whether it had an official name up till then I don't
know... In fact the name most likely I'd have thought would be "sharp"
as in music notation, which is where, I think, it originated.

And this is really off-topic now! :-)

Alan G.