/ = backslash

Thank you. It's one of those things that when you start *thinking* about it it no longer makes any sense. I can still do "less than" and "greater than" though.

Except that's wrong. \ = backslash.

The way I remember is that the backslash - \ - leans back towards the text and the forward slash - / - points away from the text.

The back slash leans back: \

The forward slash leans forward: /

Like what essexjan said.

Hoo boy. I feel better now. Now, is it "feed a cold, starve a fever," or "starve a cold, feed a fever"?

it's feed both (but with a fever you usually lose your appetite) : >

The ambiguity arises from "slash", which implies a movement, which implies a starting point. We think that we can determine which is which figuring out what "back" and "forward" mean in the context of a movement. Unfortunately, the starting point of the movement is ambiguous and so the terms are ambiguous. If "slash" were replaced with someone like "lean", then the terms wouldn't be ambiguous at all because "lean", unlike "slash", is absolute. Text is oriented both in top-to-bottom and left-to-right fashion and thus "lean", a word that has a real-world up-and-down orientation, has a definite English textual orientation. So "backlean" and "forwardlean" are immediately comprehensible and unambiguous.

I thought it was drink a cold and smoke a fever. Or is it the other way around?

Just remember that DOS uses the backslash, and UNIX and the WWW use the forward slash. So what you see in URLs is the forward slash.

That's perfect delmoi! Thank you!