Tac, Walker, Bang...

[KBakTrax]

Hey guys - easy question I hope.

I keep hearing Darren use the terms tac, walker and bang in the Hak5 vids to represent - > and ! respectively, just wanted to know if these terms are commonly used?

As I've never actually worked in an IT department most of the command line that know I've learned from reading online where the symbols are used. Was just wondering if things like tac, walker and bang are common usage or if it's more of a niche way of referring to them that a lot of people aren't familiar with?

[Sitwon]

I can't remember which ep it was but Mubix explained the origins of "tack" as having something to do with military terminology for command-line switches. (It can mean either - on Unix or / on Windows.)

"Wakka" was made up by Darren because the < and > remind him of Pacman.

"Bang" is actually and old but common word for ! in the IT world (particularly among Unix programmers and admins).

The # character has the most aliases: pound, hash, splat, crunch, octothorpe (various spellings), and others.

In Unix scripting (Bash, Perl, Python, Ruby, etc.) scripts typically begin with "#!/path/to/interpreter". This line is often referred to as "pound bang", "hash bang", "crunch bang" or "shebang".

[KBakTrax]

Ah! thanks very much Sitwon. I've done a couple of courses which involved windows CLI in which they were always refereed to as switches so was interested when I heard Darren using some different terms for them. I did try looking it up on Google but it probably didn't help that I was searching for 'tac' rather than 'tack' and 'walker' instead of 'wakka'

Also never knew that anyone referred to the # as a splat or crunch. You learn something new every day I guess.

Cheers Again.