Note: We went to see Neil deGrasse Tyson speak today, so you get more random musings on tags today!

There are a few previous entries in this series (and maybe more in the future once you read this!). You can find them all using WordPress’ snazzy search function:

http://nayrb.org/~blog/?s=TAGS

So, back to tags:

<tags are showing that your comment was less than something else. Examples:

“I rode a horse” <Clydesdale

or

“I trained my cat today” <successful

>tags are for showing the opposite, namely:

“I rode a horse” >pony

or

“I felt good today” >yesterday

“tags are substituting for the subset of #hashtags denoting quotations, or to substitute for quotation marks in very character starved tweets, such as:

Live long and prosper “Yoda

‘tags are for inner thoughts, sometimes quoting someone else, sometimes yourself[1].

Live long and prosper “Yoda ‘reallySpock

or

Live long and prosper “Yoda ‘neversaidthatdidI

The last one for the day is the infamous `backticktag, invented by people who love programs like the infamous bash fork bomb:

:(){ :|:& };: [2]

`backticktags are used for when you’re meant to take the previous comment and process it through the `backticktag as program code (as opposed to the |pipetag, where you’re supposed to take the previous comment as data)[3].

Examples of `backticktags:

:(){ :|:& };: `bash

or

10 PRINT “LOOK AROUND YOU” 20 GOTO 10 RUN `bbcbasic

[1]For an exciting treatise on this topic, check out this Slate article!

[2]I recommend you do not try running this unless you are your own sysadmin and you know what you’re doing. Indicentally, Wikipedia has a very nice writeup on how this works, copied below:

:(){ :|:& };:
\_/| |||| ||\- ... the function ':', initiating a chain-reaction: each ':' will start    two more.
 | | |||| |\- Definition ends now, to be able to run ...
 | | |||| \- End of function-block
 | | |||\- disown the functions (make them a background process), so that the children    of a parent
 | | |||   will not be killed when the parent gets auto-killed
 | | ||\- ... another copy of the ':'-function, which has to be loaded into memory.
 | | ||   So, ':|:' simply loads two copies of the function, whenever ':' is called
 | | |\- ... and pipe its output to ...
 | | \- Load a copy of the function ':' into memory ...
 | \- Begin of function-definition
 \- Define the function ':' without any parameters '()' as follows:

[3]If you’re playing with a universal turing machine[4] that can intermingle these, all bets are off.

[4]Or Lisp.