At 21:02 03/07/03, Lewis Russakov <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>What is the ~ called, and why would I see it in an internet
>address?

It's called a tilde. (In logic, this mark is used to indicate
negation and in mathematics it usually indicates the geometric
relation "is similar to".) When it appears in Internet URLs,
it frequently indicates that what follows is a user name and
that the URL is a personal webpage.

For example, the URL <http://home.nyc.rr.com/~wcohane>
might indicate that wcohane is a customer of New York City
Road Runner and that it is his personal home page. (This is
just an example and doesn't work.) This usage used to be much
more commonly used a few years ago. Another example might be
<http://www.idt.net/~wcohane>.

Regards,
Bill

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