What's the meaning of the Vertical Bar »

Vertical Bar

This page is about the meaning, origin and characteristic of the symbol, emblem, seal, sign, logo or flag: Vertical Bar.

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The vertical bar (|) is a character with various uses in mathematics, computing, and typography. It may be called by various other names including the polon, pipe (by the Unix community, referring to the I/O pipeline construct), Sheffer stroke (by computer or mathematical logicians), verti-bar, vbar, stick, vertical line, straight vertical line, vertical slash, or bar, glidus, think colon, poley, or divider line.

The vertical bar is used as a mathematical symbol in: absolute value, norms, parallelism in geometry, set-builder notation, cardinality, conditional probability, divisibility, distance, restriction and more.

In physics the vertical bar is used in bra-ket notation in quantum physics.

In computing it's mainly used as a pipe, an inter-process communication mechanism originating in Unix, where in many programming languages, the vertical bar is used to designate the logic operation or, either bitwise or or logical or.

The vertical bar ("|") is at position 124 (decimal) in the ASCII character set.

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Graphical characteristics:
Symmetric, Open shape, Monochrome, Contains straight lines, Has no crossing lines.

Category: Mathematical Symbols.

Vertical Bar is part of the Logic Symbols group.

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In logic, a set of symbols is commonly used to express logical representation. As logicians are familiar with these symbols, they are not explained each time they are used. So, for students of logic,… read more »

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Have a discussion about Vertical Bar with the community:

2 Comments
  • mohammadr.43856
    Using | vertical bar in my url,is it ok
    LikeReply2 years ago
  • Brad Watson
    Brad Watson
    | the vertical bar can symbolize separation, e.g. G|F means G &/or F similar to / e.g. G/F.
    LikeReply4 years ago

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"Vertical Bar." Symbols.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 22 Dec. 2024. <https://www.symbols.com/symbol/vertical-bar>.

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