The vertical bar (|) is a character with various uses in mathematics, where it can be used to represent absolute value, among others; in computing and programming and in general typography, as a divider not unlike the interpunct. It may be called by various other names including the polon, pipe (by the Unix community, referring to the I/O pipeline construct), Sheffer stroke (by computer or mathematical logicians), verti-bar, vbar, stick, vertical line, vertical slash, or bar, think colon, poley, or divider line.
Famous quotes containing the words vertical and/or bar:
“I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“Even the most incompetent English actor, coming on the stage briefly to announce the presence below of Lord and Lady Ditherege, gives forth a sound so soft and dulcet as almost to be a bar of music. But sometimes that is all there is. The words are lost in the graceful sweep of the notes.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)