Editing Backslash (section)

==Confusion with ¥ and other characters==

In the [[Japanese language|Japanese]] encodings [[JISCII|ISO 646-JP]] (a 7-bit code based on [[ASCII]]), [[JIS X 0201]] (an 8-bit code), and [[Shift JIS]] (a multi-byte encoding which is 8-bit for ASCII), the [[code point]] 0x5C that would be used for backslash in ASCII is instead rendered as a [[yen sign]] {{char|¥}}. Due to extensive use of the 005C code point to represent the yen sign, even today some fonts such as [[MS Mincho]] render the backslash character as a ¥, so the characters at Unicode code points {{unichar|00A5}} and {{unichar|005C}} both render as {{char|¥}} when these [[character set]]s are selected. Computer programs still treat 005C as a backslash in these environments but display it as a yen sign, causing confusion, especially in MS-DOS filenames.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.siao2.com/2005/09/17/469941.aspx |title=When is a backslash not a backslash? |publisher=Blogs.msdn.com |access-date=2013-06-16 |archive-date=2016-03-23 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160323062003/http://www.siao2.com/2005/09/17/469941.aspx |url-status=live }}</ref>

Several other [[ISO 646]] versions also replace backslash with other characters, including [[₩]] (Korean), [[Ö]] (German, Swedish), [[Ø]] (Danish, Norwegian), [[ç]] (French) and [[Ñ]] (Spanish), leading to similar problems, though with less lasting impact compared to the yen sign. Although the conflict is resolved by unique code point allocations in Unicode, the longevity of [[legacy system]]s means that (although diminishing) the issue continues to persist.

In 1991, RFC 1345 suggested {{code|//}} as a unique two-character [[mnemonic]] that might be used in internet standards as "a practical way of identifying [this] character, without reference to a coded character set and its code in [that] coded character set".<ref name="RFC1345">{{cite web |url=https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1345 |title=RFC 1345 |publisher=Tools.ietf.org |date=1991-12-26 |access-date=2013-06-16 |last1=Simonsen |first1=Keld |archive-date=2016-06-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160613195948/https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1345 |url-status=live }}</ref> Consequently, this style may be seen in early [[Internet Engineering Task Force]] documents.