This page uses notation for orthographic or other linguistic analysis. For the meaning of how⟨ ⟩,| |,/ /, and[ ]are used here, seethis page.
Thetilde (/ˈtɪldə/, also/ˈtɪld,-di,-deɪ/)[1] is agrapheme⟨˜⟩ or⟨~⟩ with a number of uses. The name of the character came intoEnglish fromSpanishtilde, which in turn came from theLatintitulus, meaning 'title' or 'superscription'.[2] Its primary use is as adiacritic (accent) in combination with a base letter. Its freestanding form is used in modern texts mainly to indicateapproximation.
The tilde was originally one of a variety of marks written over an omitted letter or several letters as ascribal abbreviation (a "mark of contraction").[3] Thus, the commonly used wordsAnno Domini were frequently abbreviated toAo Dñi, with an elevated terminal with a contraction mark placed over the "n". Such a mark could denote the omission of one letter or several letters. This saved on the expense of the scribe's labor and the cost of vellum and ink. Medieval European charters written in Latin are largely made up of such abbreviated words with contraction marks and other abbreviations; only uncommon words were given in full.
The text with abbreviations expanded is as follows:
Mollande tempore regis Eduardi geldabat pro quattuor hidis et uno ferling. Terra est quadraginta carucae. In dominio sunt tres carucae et decem servi et triginta villani et viginti bordarii cum sedecim carucis. Ibi duodecim acrae prati et quindecim acrae silvae. Pastura tres leugae in longitudine et latitudine. Reddit quattuor et viginti libras ad pensam. Huic manerio est adjuncta Blachepole. Elwardus tenebat tempore regis Edwardi pro manerio et geldabat pro dimidia hida. Terra est duae carucae. Ibi sunt quinque villani cum uno servo. Valet viginti solidos ad pensam et arsuram. Eidem manerio est injuste adjuncta Nimete et valet quindecim solidos. Ipsi manerio pertinet tercius denarius de Hundredis Nortmoltone et Badentone et Brantone et tercium animal pasturae morarum.
Translation:In the time of King Edward Mollande gelded for four hides and one ferling. The land is fortycarucates. In the domain there are three barons and ten serfs and thirty peasants and twenty bordars with sixteen barons. There are twelve acres of meadow and fifteen acres of wood. A pasture three leagues in length and breadth. It should weigh four and twenty pounds. Blachepole is attached to this manor. Elward held it in the time of King Edward for a manor and gelded for half a hide. The earth is two carucas. There are five peasants with one servant. It is worth twenty shillings for weighing and burning. The same manor is unjustly attached to Nimes and is worth fifteen shillings. To the manor belongs a third of the penny of the Hundred of Nortmolton and Badenton and Branton, and a third of the cattle of the pasture.
AnOlivetti Lettera 32 typewriter (Portuguese Model) with tilde (and circumflex) dead-key besideÇSpanish typewriter (QWERTY keyboard) with dead keys for acute, circumflex, diaeresis and grave accents. Ñ/ñ is present as a precomposed character only.
Ontypewriters designed for languages that routinely usediacritics (accent marks), there are two possible solutions. Keys can be dedicated toprecomposed characters or alternatively adead key mechanism can be provided. With the latter, a mark is made when a dead key is typed, but unlike normal keys, the paper carriage does not move on and thus the next letter to be typed is printed under that accent. Typewriters forSpanish typically have a dedicated key forÑ/ñ but, asPortuguese usesÃ/ã andÕ/õ, a single dead-key (rather than take two keys to dedicate) is the most practical solution.
The tilde symbol did not exist independently as amovable type orhot-lead printing character since thetype cases for Spanish or Portuguese would includesorts for the accented forms.
A free-standing tilde between two em dashes in three font families
The firstASCII standard (X3.64-1963) did not have a tilde.[4]: 246 Like Portuguese and Spanish, the French, German andScandinavian languages also needed symbols in excess of the basic 26 needed for English. TheASA worked with and through theCCITT to internationalize the code-set, to meet the basic needs of at least the Western European languages.
It appears to have been at their May 13–15, 1963 meeting that the CCITT decided that the proposed ISO 7-bit code standard would be suitable for their needs if a lower case alphabet and five diacritical marks [...] were added to it.[5] At the October 29–31 meeting, then, the ISO subcommittee altered the ISO draft to meet the CCITT requirements, replacing the up-arrow and left-arrow with diacriticals, adding diacritical meanings to the apostrophe and quotation mark, and making thenumber sign a dual[a] for the tilde.[6]
— Yucca's free information site (which cites the original sources).[7]
Thus ISO646 was born (and the ASCII standard updated to X3.64-1967), providing the tilde and other symbols as optional characters.[4]: 247 [b]
ISO646 and ASCII incorporated many of the overprinting lower-case diacritics from typewriters, including tilde. Overprinting was intended to work by putting abackspace code between the codes for letter and diacritic.[8]However even at that time, mechanisms that could do this or any other overprinting were not widely available, did not work for capital letters, and were impossible on video displays, with the result that this concept failed to gain significant acceptance. Consequently, many of these free-standing diacritics (and theunderscore) were quickly reused by software as additional syntax, basically becoming new types of syntactic symbols that a programming language could use. As this usage became predominant,type design gradually evolved so these diacritic characters became larger and more vertically centered, making them useless as overprinted diacritics but much easier to read as free-standing characters that had come to be used for entirely different and novel purposes. Most modern fonts align the plain ASCII "spacing" (free-standing) tilde at the same level asdashes, or only slightly higher.[citation needed]
The free-standing tilde is at code 126 in ASCII, where it was inherited into Unicode as U+007E.
A similar shaped mark (⁓) is known in typography andlexicography as aswung dash: these are used in dictionaries to indicate the omission of the entry word.[9]
Logo of the Instituto CervantesLogo of CNN en Español
As indicated by the etymological origin of the word "tilde" in English, this symbol has been closely associated with theSpanish language. The connection stems from the use of the tilde above the letter⟨n⟩ to form the (different) letter⟨ñ⟩ in Spanish, a feature shared by onlya few other languages, most of which are historically connected to Spanish. This peculiarity can help non-native speakers quickly identify a text as being written in Spanish with little chance of error. Particularly during the 1990s, Spanish-speaking intellectuals and news outlets demonstrated support for the language and the culture by defending this letter againstglobalisation andcomputerisation trends that threatened to remove it from keyboards and other standardised products and codes.[10][11] TheInstituto Cervantes, founded bySpain's government to promote the Spanish language internationally, chose as its logo a highly stylisedÑ with a large tilde. The 24-hour news channelCNN in the US later adopted a similar strategy on its existing logo for the launch of itsSpanish-language version, therefore being written as CN͠N. And similarly to theNational Basketball Association (NBA), theSpain men's national basketball team is nicknamed "ÑBA".
In Spanish itself the wordtilde is used more generally for diacritics, including the stress-marking acute accent.[12] The diacritic~ is more commonly calledvirgulilla orla tilde de la eñe, and is not considered an accent mark in Spanish, but rather simply a part of the letterñ (much likethe dot overı makes ani character that is familiar to readers of English).
Unicode encodes a number of cases of "letter with tilde" asprecomposed characters and these are displayed below. In addition, many more symbols may be composed using thecombining character facility (U+0303◌̃COMBINING TILDE,U+0330◌̰COMBINING TILDE BELOW and others) that may be used with any letter or other diacritic to create a customised symbol but this does not mean that the result has any real-world application and are not shown in the table.
TheEnglish language does not use the tilde as a diacritic, though it is used in someloanwords. The standalone form of the symbol is used more widely. Informally,[13] it means"approximately", "about", or "around", such as "~30 minutes before", meaning "approximately 30 minutes before".[14][15] It may also mean "similar to",[16] including "of the sameorder of magnitude as",[13] such as "x ~y" meaning thatx andy are of the same order of magnitude. Another approximation symbol is thedouble tilde≈, meaning "approximately/almost equal to".[14][16][17] The tilde is also used to indicatecongruence of shapes by placing it over an= symbol, thus≅.
In more recent digital usage, tildes on either side of a word or phrase have sometimes come to convey a particular tone that "let[s] the enclosed words perform both sincerity and irony", which can pre-emptively defuse a negative reaction.[18] For example,BuzzFeed journalist Joseph Bernstein interprets the tildes in the followingtweet:
"in the ~ spirit of the season ~ will now link to some of the (imho) #Bestof2014 sports reads. if you hate nice things, mute that hashtag."
as a way of making it clear that both the author and reader are aware that the enclosed phrase – "spirit of the season" – "is cliche and we know this quality is beneath our author, and we don't want you to think our author is a cliche person generally".[18][c]
Among other uses, the symbol has been used onsocial media toindicate sarcasm.[19] It may also be used online, especially in informal writing such asfanfiction, to convey a cutesy, playful, or flirtatious tone.[20]
Carta marina showing Finnish economy, with the captionsHic fabricantur naves andHic fabricanturbombarde abbreviated
Later, it was used to makeabbreviations in medievalLatin documents. When an⟨n⟩ or⟨m⟩ followed a vowel, it was often omitted, and a tilde (physically, a small⟨N⟩) was placed over the preceding vowel to indicate the missing letter; this is the origin of the use of tilde to indicate nasalization (comparethe development of the umlaut as an abbreviation of⟨e⟩.)[citation needed] A tilde represented an omitted⟨a⟩ or a syllable containing it.[22] The practice of using the tilde over a vowel to indicate omission of an⟨n⟩ or⟨m⟩ continued in printed books inFrench as a means of reducing text length until the 17th century. It was also used inPortuguese andSpanish.[citation needed]
The tilde was also used occasionally to make other abbreviations, such as over the letter⟨q⟩, makingq̃,to signify the wordque ("that")[citation needed]. It also appears forqua and together with the letter⟨p⟩ to formp̃ forpra.[22]
It is also as a small⟨n⟩ that the tilde originated when written above other letters, marking aLatin⟨n⟩ which had beenelided in old Galician-Portuguese. In modernPortuguese it indicatesnasalization of the base vowel:mão "hand", from Lat.manu-;razões "reasons", from Lat.rationes.[citation needed] This usage has been adopted in the orthographies of severalnative languages of South America, such asGuarani andNheengatu, as well as in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and many other phonetic alphabets. For example,[ljɔ̃] is the IPA transcription of the pronunciation of the French place-nameLyon.
InBreton, the symbol⟨ñ⟩ after a vowel means that the letter⟨n⟩ serves only to give the vowel a nasalised pronunciation, without being itself pronounced, as it normally is. For example,⟨an⟩ gives the pronunciation[ãn] whereas⟨añ⟩ gives[ã].
In theDMG romanization ofTunisian Arabic, the tilde is used for nasal vowels õ and ṏ.
The tilded⟨n⟩ (⟨ñ⟩,⟨Ñ⟩) developed from the digraph⟨nn⟩ in Spanish. In this language,⟨ñ⟩ is considered a separate letter calledeñe (IPA:[ˈeɲe]), rather than a letter-diacritic combination; it is placed in Spanish dictionaries between the letters⟨n⟩ and⟨o⟩. In Spanish, the wordtilde actually refers to diacritics in general, e.g. the acute accent inJosé,[23] while the diacritic in⟨ñ⟩ is called "virgulilla" (IPA:[birɣuˈliʝa]) (yeísta) or (IPA:[birɣuˈliʎa]) (non-yeísta).[24] Current languages in which the tilded⟨n⟩ (⟨ñ⟩) is used for thepalatal nasal consonant/ɲ/ include
InVietnamese, a tilde over a vowel represents a creaky risingtone (ngã). Letters with the tilde are not considered separate letters of theVietnamese alphabet.
A tilde above a letter indicatesnasalization, e.g.[ã],[ṽ].
A tilde superimposed onto the middle of a letter indicatesvelarization orpharyngealization, e.g.[ɫ],[z̴]. If no precomposedUnicode character exists, the Unicode characterU+0334◌̴COMBINING TILDE OVERLAY can be used to generate one.
A tilde below a letter indicateslaryngealisation, e.g.[d̰]. If no precomposed Unicode character exists, the Unicode characterU+0330◌̰COMBINING TILDE BELOW can be used to generate one.
A tilde between twophonemes indicates optionality, or "alternates with". E.g. ⟨ɕ~ʃ⟩ could indicate that the sounds may alternate depending on context (free variation), or that they vary based on region or speaker, or some other variation.
Some languages and alphabets use the tilde for other purposes, such as:
Arabic script: A symbol resembling the tilde (U+0653ـٓARABIC MADDAH ABOVE) is used over the letter⟨ا⟩ (/a/) to become⟨آ⟩, denoting a long/ʔaː/ sound.
Guaraní: The tilded⟨G̃⟩ (note that⟨G/g⟩ with tilde is not available as a precomposed glyph inUnicode) stands for thevelar nasal consonant. Also, the tilded⟨y⟩ (⟨Ỹ⟩) stands for the nasalized upper central rounded vowel[ɨ̃].Munduruku, Parintintín, and two older spellings of Filipino words also use⟨g̃⟩.
Syriac script: A tilde (~) under the letterKaph represents a[t͡ʃ] sound, transliterated asch orč.[25]
Estonian andVõro use the tilde above the letter o (õ) to indicate the vowel[ɤ], a rare sound among languages.
Unicode has acombining vertical tilde character:U+033E◌̾COMBINING VERTICAL TILDE. It is used to indicatemiddle tone in linguistic transcription of certain dialects of theLithuanian language,[26] and was also used historically in the letterх̾, which was part of thePolish Cyrillic alphabet of the late 19th century.
The tilde is used in various ways in punctuation, including In some languages (such as in French),[citation needed] a tilde or a tilde-likewave dash (Unicode:U+301C〜WAVE DASH) may be used as apunctuation mark (instead of an unspacedhyphen,en dash orem dash) between twonumbers, to indicate arange. Doing so avoids the risk of confusion withsubtraction or a hyphenated number (such as a part number or model number). For example, "12~15" means "12 to 15", "~3" means "up to three", and "100~" means "100 and greater".[citation needed]East Asian languages almost always use this convention, but it is sometimes done for clarity in some other languages as well.Chinese uses the wave dash andfull-width em dash interchangeably for this purpose. In English, the tilde is often used to express ranges and model numbers inelectronics, but rarely in formal grammar or in type-set documents, as a wavy dash preceding a number sometimes represents an approximation (see below).
Therange tilde is used for various purposes inFrench, but only to denote ranges of numbers (e.g.,« 21~32 degrés Celsius »" means "21 to 32 degrees Celsius")[citation needed]
(The symbolU+2248≈ALMOST EQUAL TO (adouble tilde) is also used in French, for example,« ≈400 mètres » means "approximately 400 meters"[citation needed].)
Before a number the tilde can mean 'approximately'; '~42' means 'approximately 42'.[28] When used withcurrency symbols that precede the number (national conventions differ), the tilde precedes the symbol, thus for example '~$10' means 'about ten dollars'.[29][better source needed]
Thewave dash (波ダッシュ,nami dasshu) is used for various purposes in Japanese, including to denote ranges of numbers (e.g.,5〜10 means between 5 and 10) in place of dashes or brackets, and to indicate origin. The wave dash is also used to separate a title and a subtitle in the same line, as acolon is used in English.
In practice the full-width tilde (全角チルダ,zenkaku chiruda) (UnicodeU+FF5E～FULLWIDTH TILDE), is often used instead of the wave dash (波ダッシュ,nami dasshu) (UnicodeU+301C〜WAVE DASH), because theShift JIS code for the wave dash, 0x8160, which should be mapped to U+301C,[30][31] is instead mapped to U+FF5E[32] inWindows code page 932 (Microsoft'scode page for Japanese), a widely used extension of Shift JIS.
This decision avoided a shape definition error in the original (6.2) Unicode code charts:[33] the wave dash reference glyph in JIS / Shift JIS[34][35] matches the Unicode reference glyph for U+FF5EFULLWIDTH TILDE,[36] while the original reference glyph for U+301C[33] was reflected, incorrectly,[37] when Unicode imported the JIS wave dash. In other platforms such as theclassic Mac OS andmacOS, 0x8160 is correctly mapped to U+301C. It is generally difficult, if not impossible, for users of Japanese Windows to type U+301C, especially in legacy, non-Unicode applications.
A similar situation exists regarding the KoreanKS X 1001 character set, in which Microsoft maps theEUC-KR orUHC code for the wave dash (0xA1AD) toU+223C∼TILDE OPERATOR,[38][39] whileIBM andApple map it to U+301C.[40][41][42] Microsoft also uses U+FF5E to map the KS X 1001 raised tilde (0xA2A6),[39] while Apple usesU+02DC˜SMALL TILDE.[42]
The current Unicode reference glyph for U+301C has been corrected[37] to match the JIS standard[43] in response to a 2014 proposal, which noted that while the existing Unicode reference glyph had been matched by fonts from the discontinuedWindows XP, all other major platforms including later versions of Microsoft Windows shipped with fonts matching the JIS reference glyph for U+301C.[44]
The JIS / Shift JIS wave dash is still formally mapped to U+301C as ofJIS X 0213,[45] whereas theWHATWG Encoding Standard used byHTML5 follows Microsoft in mapping 0x8160 to U+FF5E.[46] These two code points have a similar or identical glyph in several fonts, reducing the confusion and incompatibility.
WeChat users frequently replace final punctuations with tildes in messages. An analysis of such "innovative uses" of tildes found that final tildes are most used to make the message friendlier and polite. They make expressives more sincere and directives less abrupt. Less commonly, final tildes imply sounds, i.e. otomatopeas and sound extensions. This use is compared tosajiao (Chinese:撒娇), a child-like acting seen in East Asian cultures that are also vocalized by raising or extending tone.[47]
A tilde in front of a single quantity can mean "approximately", "about"[14] or "of the sameorder of magnitude as."
In writtenmathematical logic, the tilde representsnegation: "~p" means "notp", where "p" is aproposition. Modern use often replaces the tilde with the negation symbol (¬) for this purpose, to avoid confusion withequivalence relations.
Inmathematics, the tilde operator (which can be represented by a tilde or the dedicated characterU+223C∼TILDE OPERATOR), sometimes called "twiddle", is often used to denote anequivalence relation between two objects. Thus "x ~y" means "x isequivalent toy". It is a weaker statement than stating thatxequalsy. The expression "x ~y" is sometimes read aloud as "x twiddlesy", perhaps as an analogue to the verbal expression of "x =y".[48]
The tilde can indicate approximate equality in a variety of ways. It can be used to denote theasymptotic equality of two functions. For example,f (x) ~g(x) means that.[13]
A tilde is also used to indicate "approximately equal to" (e.g. 1.902 ~= 2). This usage probably developed as a typed alternative to thelibra symbol used for the same purpose in written mathematics, which is an equal sign with the upper bar replaced by a bar with an upward hump, bump, or loop in the middle (︍︍♎︎) or, sometimes, a tilde (≃).[citation needed] The symbol "≈" is also used for this purpose.
A tilde can also be used to represent geometricsimilarity (e.g.∆ABC ~ ∆DEF, meaningtriangleABC is similar toDEF). A triple tilde (≋) is often used to showcongruence, an equivalence relation in geometry.[citation needed]
Ingraph theory, the tilde can be used to represent adjacency between vertices. The edge connects vertices and which can be said to be adjacent, and this adjacency can be denoted.
The symbol "" is pronounced as "eff tilde" or, informally, as "eff twiddle".[49][50] This can be used to denote theFourier transform off, or alift off, and can have a variety of other meanings depending on the context.
A tilde placed below a letter in mathematics can represent avector quantity (e.g.).
Instatistics andprobability theory, a tilde placed on top of a variable is sometimes used to represent themedian of that variable; thus would indicate the median of the variable. A tilde over the letter n () is sometimes used to indicate theharmonic mean.
In machine learning, a tilde may represent a candidate value for a cell state inGRUs orLSTM units. (e.g. c̃)
Often inphysics, one can consider anequilibrium solution to an equation, and then a perturbation to that equilibrium. For the variables in the original equation (for instance) a substitution can be made, where is the equilibrium part and is the perturbed part.
For relations involving preference,economists sometimes use the tilde to representindifference between two or more bundles of goods. For example, to say that a consumer is indifferent between bundlesx andy, an economist would writex ~y.
The tilde may represent some sort of phonetic or phonemic variation between two sounds, which might beallophones or infree variation. For example,[χ~x] can represent "either[χ] or[x]".
Ininterlinear gloss, a tilde sets off an element added to a word byreduplication; were a hyphen or double hyphen used instead, confusion would arise because that element would be notated in the same way as an independent morpheme requiring an independent gloss.
Computer programmers use the tilde in various ways and sometimes call the symbol (as opposed to the diacritic) asquiggle,squiggly,swiggle, ortwiddle. According to theJargon File, other synonyms sometimes used in programming includenot,approx,wiggle,enyay (aftereñe) and (humorously)sqiggle/ˈskɪɡəl/.[56]
OnUnix-likeoperating systems (includingAIX,BSD,Linux andmacOS), tilde normally indicates the current user'shome directory. For example, if the current user's home directory is/home/user, then the commandcd ~ is equivalent tocd /home/user,cd $HOME, orcd.[56] This convention derives from theLear-SieglerADM-3A terminal in common use during the 1970s, which happened to have the tilde symbol and the word "Home" (for moving the cursor to the upper left) on the same key.[citation needed] When prepended to a particular username, the tilde indicates that user's home directory (e.g.,~janedoe for the home directory of userjanedoe, such as/home/janedoe).[57]
Used inURLs on theWorld Wide Web, it often denotes a personal website on aUnix-based server. For example,http://www.example.com/~johndoe/ might be the personal website of John Doe. This mimics the Unix shell usage of the tilde. However, when accessed from the web, file access is usually directed to asubdirectory in the user's home directory, such as/home/username/public_html or/home/username/www.[58]
In URLs, the characters%7E (or%7e) may substitute for a tilde if an input device lacks a tilde key.[59] Thus,http://www.example.com/~johndoe/ andhttp://www.example.com/%7Ejohndoe/ will behave in the same manner.
InAPL[64]: 68 andMATLAB,[65] tilde represents the monadic logical function NOT. and in APL it additionally represents the dyadicmultiset functionwithout (set difference).[64]: 258
JavaScript also uses tilde as bitwise NOT. Because bitwise operators work on integers, and numbers in JavaScript are 64 bit floating point numbers, the operator converts numbers to a 32-bit signed integer before it performing the negation.[69] The conversion truncates the fractional part and most significant bits. This lets two tildes~~x to be used as a short syntax to cast to integer. However, it is not recommended as use for truncation. In contrast, it does not truncate BigInts, which are arbitrarily large integers.[70]
In C++[71] and C#,[72] the tilde is also used as the first character in aclass'smethod name (where the rest of the name must be the same name as the class) to indicate adestructor – a special method which is called at the end of theobject's life.
In ASP.NET applications, tilde ('~') is used as a shortcut to the root of the application's virtual directory.[73]
In theCSS stylesheet language, the tilde finds the element selected by the right-hand side that shares the parent with an element selected by the left-hand side.[74]
In theD programming language, the tilde is used as bitwise not operator,concatenation operator such as those ofarrays,[75] and to indicate an object destructor.[76][77] Tilde operator can be overloaded for user types,[78] and binary tilde operator is mostly used to merging two objects, or adding some objects to set of objects. It was introduced because plus operator can have different meaning in many situations. For example, "120" + "14" may produce "134" (addition of two numbers), "12014" (concatenation of strings), or something else.[79] D disallows + operator for arrays (and strings), and provides separate operator for concatenation (similarlyPHP programming language solved this problem by using dot operator for concatenation, and + for number addition, which will also work on strings containing numbers).
InEiffel, the tilde is used for object comparison. Ifa andb denote objects, the Boolean expressiona ~b has value true if and only if these objects are equal, as defined by the applicable version of the library routineis_equal, which by default denotes field-by-field object equality but can be redefined in any class to support a specific notion of equality.[80]: 114–115 Ifa andb are references, the object equality expressiona ~b is to be contrasted witha =b which denotes reference equality. Unlike the calla.is_equal (b), the expressiona ~b istype-safe even in the presence ofcovariance.
In theApache Groovy programming language the tilde character is used as an operator mapped to the bitwiseNegate() method.[81] Given a String the method will produce a java.util.regex.Pattern. Given an integer it will negate the integer bitwise like in C.=~ and==~ can in Groovy be used to match a regular expression.[82][83]
InHaskell, the tilde is used in type constraints to indicate type equality.[84] Also, in pattern-matching, the tilde is used to indicate a lazy pattern match.[85]
In theInform 6 programming language, the tilde is used to indicate a quotation mark inside a quoted string. Tilde itself is created by@@126.[86]
In "text mode" of theLaTeX typesetting language a tilde diacritic can be obtained using, e.g.,\~{n}, yielding "ñ". A stand-alone tilde can be obtained by using\textasciitilde or\string~.In "math mode" a tilde diacritic can be written as, e.g.,\tilde{x}. For a wider tilde\widetilde can be used. The\sim command produce a tilde-like binary relation symbol that is often used in mathematical expressions, and the double-tilde≈ is obtained with\approx. Theurl package also supports entering tildes directly, e.g.,\url{http://server/~name}.In both text and math mode, a tilde on its own (~) renders a white space with no line breaking.
InMediaWiki syntax, four tildes are a shortcut for a user's signature. Three and five tildes puts the signature without timestamp and only the timestamp, respectively.[87]
InCommon Lisp, the tilde is used as the prefix for format specifiers in format strings.[88]
InMax/MSP, MSP objects have names ending with a tilde. MSP objects process at the computer's sampling rate and mainly deal with sound.[89]
InStandard ML, the tilde is used as the prefix for negative numbers and as the unary negation operator.[90]
InOCaml, the tilde is used to specify the label for a labeled parameter.[91]
InR, the tilde operator is used to separate the left- and right-hand sides in a model formula.[92]
InObject REXX, the twiddle is used as a "message send" symbol. For example,Employee.name~lower() would cause thelower() method to act on the objectEmployee'sname attribute, returning the result of the operation.~~ returns the object that received the method rather than the result produced. Thus, it can be used when the result need not be returned or when cascading methods are to be used.team~~insert("Jane")~~insert("Joe")~~insert("Steve") would send multiple concurrentinsert messages, thus invoking theinsert method three consecutive times on theteam object.[93]
InRaku, a prefixing tildeconverts a value to a string. An infix tildeconcatenates strings,[94] taking place of the dot operator in Perl, as the dot is used for member access instead of->.[95]~~ is called "the smartmatch operator" and its semantics depend on the type of the right-side argument. Namely, it checks numeric and string equalities, performsregular expression match tests (as opposed to=~ in Perl[95]), andtype checking.[94]
my$concatResult ="Hello " ~"world!";$concatResult ~~ /<|w><[A..Z]><[a..z]>*<|w>/;say$/;# outputs "Hello"# the $/ variable holds the last regex match result
InYAML, the "Core schema," a set of aliases that processors are recommended to use, resolves a tilde as null.[96]
The presence (or absence) of a tilde engraved on the keyboard depends on the territory where it was sold. In either case, computer's system settings determine thekeyboard mapping and the default setting will match the engravings on the keys. Even so, it certainly possible to configure a keyboard for a different locale than that supplied by the retailer. On American and British keyboards, the tilde is a standard keytop and pressing it produces a free-standing "ASCII Tilde". To generate a letter with a tilde diacritic requires theUS international orUK extended keyboard setting.
With US-international, the~ key is adead key: pressing that key and then a letter produces the tilde-accented form of that letter. (For example,~a producesã.) With this setting active, an ASCII tilde can be inserted with the dead key followed by the space bar, or alternatively by striking the dead key twice in a row.
With UK-extended, the key works normally but becomes a 'dead key' when combined withAltGr. ThusAltGr+# followed by a letter produces the accented form of that letter.
With aMac either of the Alt/Option keys function similarly.
The dominantUnix convention for naming backup copies of files is appending a tilde to the original file name. It originated with theEmacs text editor[97] and was adopted by many other editors and some command-line tools.
Emacs also introduced an elaborate numbered backup scheme, with files namedfilename.~1~,filename.~2~ and so on.[98] It didn't catch on, as the rise ofversion control software eliminates the need for this usage.[citation needed]
The tilde was part ofMicrosoft'sfilename mangling scheme when it extended theFAT file system standard to support long filenames forMicrosoft Windows. Programs written prior to this development could only access filenames in the so-called8.3 format—the filenames consisted of a maximum of eight characters from a restricted character set (e.g. no spaces), followed by a period, followed by three more characters. In order to permit these legacy programs to access files in the FAT file system, each file had to be given two names—one long, more descriptive one, and one that conformed to the 8.3 format. This was accomplished with a name-mangling scheme in which the first six characters of the filename are followed by a tilde and a digit. For example, "Program Files" might become "PROGRA~1".[99]
The tilde symbol is also often used to prefix hidden temporary files that are created when a document is opened in Windows.[citation needed] For example, when a document "Document1.doc" is opened in Word, a file called "~$cument1.doc" is created in the same directory. This file contains information about which user has the file open, to prevent multiple users from attempting to change a document at the same time.[100]
In thejuggling notation system Beatmap, tilde can be added to either "hand" in a pair of fields to say "cross the arms with this hand on top".Mills' Mess is thus represented as (~2x,1)(1,2x)(2x,~1)*.[101]
^ISO646 (and ASCII, which it includes) is a standard for 7-bit encoding, providing just 96 printable characters (and 32control characters). This was insufficient to meet the needs of Western European languages and so the standard specifies certaincode points that are available for national variation. With the arrival of 8-bit "extended ASCII", this issue was largely mitigated, though not fully resolved untilUnicode was established.
^Martin, Charles Trice (1910). The record interpreter : a collection of abbreviations, Latin words and names used in English historical manuscripts and records (2nd ed.). London, preface, p.5[1]
^Nestle, Eberhard (1888).Syrische Grammatik mit Litteratur, Chrestomathie und Glossar. Berlin: H. Reuther's Verlagsbuchhandlung. [translated to English asSyriac grammar with bibliography, chrestomathy and glossary, by R. S. Kennedy. London: Williams & Norgate 1889. p. 5].
^Wallrapp (1994). "Standardization of flexible body modeling in multibody system codes, Part I: Definition of Standard Input Data".Mechanics of Structures and Machines.22 (3):283–304.doi:10.1080/08905459408905214.
^Nelson, Graham (July 2001)."§1 Routines".The Inform Designer's Manual (4th ed.). Interactive Fiction Library.ISBN0-9713119-0-0. Archived fromthe original on 7 June 2024. Retrieved28 November 2024.
^Ashley, W. David; Flatscher, Rony G.; Hessling, Mark; McGuire, Rick; Miesfeld, Mark; Peedin, Lee; Tammer, Rainer; Wolfers, Jon (14 August 2009)."Terms, Expressions, and Operators".Open Object Rexx™: Reference. Version 4.0.0 Edition. Archived fromthe original on 16 January 2021. Retrieved6 December 2024.
^ab"Operators".Raku documentation. 13 September 2024. Archived fromthe original on 30 November 2024. Retrieved6 December 2024.
.svg)
