Tilde
May 28th 2007 07:35
Now here’s a weird thing. Last night I was trying to upload a post using Mozilla Firefox as the browser. Normally I have no problems with this browser, and, now that I’ve got used to it, prefer it to IE7.
The post contained a link to a site where the last two parts of the URL had two tildes in it. However, every time I clicked on publish the tildes would turn into the following: “%E7”, which is apparently the code for a tilde. That should have been fine, except that by the time the post was published the link was no longer persona grata and would lead to an error message.
I tried all manner of things: swapping the tildes for a slash (it got me to the site, but not to the exact page); copying the URL differently; putting the URL in directly instead of via the publish section’s own link system. Nothing worked, and even my geek of a son couldn’t come up with anything, though he tried.
I was lying in bed dozing quite a bit later on, not thinking about the post and link at all, when suddenly it occurred to me that maybe Mozilla had something to do with the problem. It was too late to get up and try it then, but tonight after work, I loaded up IE7 instead of Mozilla, and, voila! the post is in, and the link works. Now, ain’t that strange?
But problems apart, in the course of trying to find out something about the tilde problem I discovered that if you put a tilde in front of a Google search word, it will also bring up synonyms of that word. Thus, search for movie with a tilde in front (and no space between) and you’ll also get results for film. Search for home and you’ll also get house. Search for run and you’ll also get marathon.
At first sight it seems to be a way of getting too many results, but in cases where things aren’t so easy to define it can be very useful.
The post contained a link to a site where the last two parts of the URL had two tildes in it. However, every time I clicked on publish the tildes would turn into the following: “%E7”, which is apparently the code for a tilde. That should have been fine, except that by the time the post was published the link was no longer persona grata and would lead to an error message.
I tried all manner of things: swapping the tildes for a slash (it got me to the site, but not to the exact page); copying the URL differently; putting the URL in directly instead of via the publish section’s own link system. Nothing worked, and even my geek of a son couldn’t come up with anything, though he tried.
I was lying in bed dozing quite a bit later on, not thinking about the post and link at all, when suddenly it occurred to me that maybe Mozilla had something to do with the problem. It was too late to get up and try it then, but tonight after work, I loaded up IE7 instead of Mozilla, and, voila! the post is in, and the link works. Now, ain’t that strange?
But problems apart, in the course of trying to find out something about the tilde problem I discovered that if you put a tilde in front of a Google search word, it will also bring up synonyms of that word. Thus, search for movie with a tilde in front (and no space between) and you’ll also get results for film. Search for home and you’ll also get house. Search for run and you’ll also get marathon.
At first sight it seems to be a way of getting too many results, but in cases where things aren’t so easy to define it can be very useful.
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