// the double forward slash

http://www.mxwei.blogspot.com/

Ever wondered about the motive behind the double forward slash in your internet addresses? I'm glad you asked...

The "/" is a punctuation mark often used to represent "or" & "and", but in the computing world it is used to separate directory and file components of a path, ie what you see in URLs. So get this, after almost two decades since Sir Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web, the knighted scientist recently confesses that the "//" in internet addresses "were a mistake" here's what he had to say during a recent interview.

“When I designed the URL, this thing which starts http://, the slash was to indicate we’re actually starting at the top, not starting down at the next slash. Really, if you think about it, it doesn’t need the //. I could have designed it not to have the //. Boy, now people on the radio are calling it forward slash forward slash’. “People have to use that finger so much. Look at all the paper and trees that could have been saved if people had not had to write or type out those slashes on paper over the years - not to mention the human labor and time spent typing those two keystrokes countless millions of times in browser address boxes,”

The // is used as a prefix to all my blog entries, it is as superfluous as it is in our browser address boxes. Frankly I just love the way it looks, perhaps Sir Tim Berners Lee felt the same.