Wondiering What is a non alphanumeric? In the world of computer programming, the term “non-alphanumeric” simply refers to any character that is not a number or letter in the English alphabet. Most non-alphanumeric characters are symbols that are used to perform various functions in programming code. For example, the exclamation point (!) is often used to designate the beginning of a command, and the dollar sign ($) is typically used to indicate a variable.
While non-alphanumeric characters may seem confusing at first, they are actually quite simple once you get the hang of them. In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at some of the most common non-alphanumeric characters and how they are used in programming. By the end of this post, you should have a better understanding of what these characters are and how to use them in your own code.
Some of the most common non-alphanumeric characters include:
- The ampersand (&): This character is typically used as a shortcut for “and”. For example, “AT&T” is short for “American Telephone & Telegraph”.
- The asterisk (*): This character is most commonly used as a wildcard, which means it can represent any number of characters. For example, if you wanted to search for all files that start with the letter “a”, you could use the search query “a*”.
- The caret (^): This character is often used to denote exponentiation, which simply means raising a number to a power. For example, if you wanted to calculate 2 raised to the 3rd power, you would use the formula “2^3”.
- The slash (\/): This character is most commonly used as a division symbol. However, it can also be used as an escape character, which means it can be used to ignore certain kinds of characters. For example, if you wanted to search for the literal string “a/b”, you would need to use the search query “a\/b” because otherwise the slash would be interpreted as a division symbol.
- The less than (<) and greater than (>) symbols: These symbols are typically used to designate angles or directionality. For example, if you were searching for files that contain the word “left”, you might use the search query “<left”.
- The equals (=) and plus (+) signs: These characters are most commonly used as mathematical operators. However, they can also be used in programming languages as assignment operators. For example, in JavaScript, the statement “x = 5” would assign the value 5 to the variable x.
- The parentheses (( and )) symbols: These symbols are typically used in mathematical formulas or as part of conditional statements in programming code. For example, in JavaScript, the statement “if (x > 5)” would check whether the value of x is greater than 5 before executing whichever code comes after that line.
Conclusion
There’s a lot more to know about non-alphanumeric characters than meets the eye! Hopefully, this blog post has given you a better understanding of what these characters are and how they are used in programming. As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them down below. Happy coding!