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Vertical bar, '''vertical line''' or ''' Pipe ''' is the name of the ASCII character at position 124 (decimal). The character is depicted as either a solid vertical bar ("'''|'''") or a vertical bar with a break in the middle (broken bar "'''¦'''"). The character is usually depicted as a broken bar on IBM PC Keyboard s to distinguish it from other characters. However, in Unicode the "broken bar" is a separate character, U+00A6 (¦).


Usage:



Mathematics

The vertical bar is used as a Mathematical Symbol in
  • "''.

  • one, x sub two"''; though Unicode also provides a special double vertical line symbol U+2016: ''x''

  • Two "''. Often sets are written with a Colon ':' rather than a vertical bar.

  • of X given Y"''.

  • Divisibility : a | b, read ''"a divides b"''.

  • the Sheffer Stroke .



Backus-Naur Form

In BNF the expression consists of sequences of symbols and/or sequences separated by '|', indicating a choice, the whole being a possible substitution for the symbol on the left.
: ::= |


Unix

A Pipe is an Inter-process Communication mechanism originating in Unix which allows the output of one process to be used as input to another. In most Unix Shell s (command interpreters), this is represented by the vertical bar character. This feature is found in most versions of DOS (and hence Windows) as well.


Regular Expression

In Regular Expression s, the pipe indicates alternation. E.g., Grep 'foo|bar' matches lines containing 'foo' or 'bar'.


Disjunction

In many programming languages, it is used to designate the logic operation ''or'', either Bitwise ''or'' or Logical ''or''.

Specifically, in C and other languages following C syntax, such as Perl and Java , ''(a | b)'' denotes Bitwise Or ; while double vertical bar ''(a || b)'' denotes ( Short-circuited ) Logical Or .


Concatenation


In PL/I and SQL , the operator "||" denotes String Concatenation .


Delimiter

Although not as common as commas or tabs, the vertical bar/pipe symbol can be used as delimiter in a Flat File . An example of a pipe-delimited standard data format is LEDES 1998B.


Khoisan orthography


In the Khoisan Languages , the pipe is used to write the Dental Click .


MediaWiki


The pipe character is used to separate parameters in its usage of templates.


Etymology

The name ''pipe'' for the character "|" was a natural consequence of its usage in Unix shells, where it is used to notate the usage of a programming construct of that name (see above).