Unicode Explained

tab is often included, too. For example, in the C programming language, the standard

function isspace() tests for its argument being a whitespace character, not just a space.

Tilde ~ (U+007E)

This character has mixed usage. The word “tilde” is of Spanish origin and refers to a

wavy diacritic mark, as in Spanish ñ (although in Spanish, the word “tilde” often de-

notes the acute accent, too!). The name of this character thus reflects one of the origi-

nally intended uses. Currently such use has little to do with tilde as an ASCII and

Unicode character. In jargon, names like “squiggle” and “twiddle” are used.

In practice, tilde is used for a variety of technical purposes according to specific rules

—e.g., in programming and command languages. For example, in many Unix shells,

~ denotes the user’s home directory. Reflecting this tradition, on many web servers,

people’s web pages are named in a manner that involves the tilde character. In Windows

systems, the mapping of Windows filenames to DOS-compatible filenames (“8+3

characters”) uses tilde; e.g., LONGFILENAME.TXT may get mapped to LONG

FI~1.TXT. In the C language, the tilde denotes a bitwise operator that complements

each bit. In Perl, the tilde is used in matching operators.

The glyph for tilde has varying shapes. Sometimes it looks like a diacritic tilde, but

much more often it looks like an operator, placed vertically at the