Difference between revisions of "Talk:1394: Superm*n"

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(It's hyphenated.)
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::Oops, looks like I read the initial comment too quickly, didn't realize you were kind of making the same point I wanted to, you were just being more technical about it. Either way, I think the explanation of the wildcard in the article itself should be made vague enough to avoid further threads like this. - [[Special:Contributions/108.162.242.10|108.162.242.10]] 06:03, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 
::Oops, looks like I read the initial comment too quickly, didn't realize you were kind of making the same point I wanted to, you were just being more technical about it. Either way, I think the explanation of the wildcard in the article itself should be made vague enough to avoid further threads like this. - [[Special:Contributions/108.162.242.10|108.162.242.10]] 06:03, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 
:It's clearly a Unix shell file glob. [[User:Jeremyp|Jeremyp]] ([[User talk:Jeremyp|talk]]) 09:54, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 
:It's clearly a Unix shell file glob. [[User:Jeremyp|Jeremyp]] ([[User talk:Jeremyp|talk]]) 09:54, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 +
::This form of wildcard is used in the Windows command prompt as well, and is very well known for Windows users.  I obviously can't speak for the full XKCD audience, but limiting the scope of that wildcard to Unix seems unnecessarily exclusive.  (Wouldn't it be sufficient to just refer to it as a "wildcard" as a generic concept?  I mean, You Know You're a Geek When...) [[User:KieferSkunk|KieferSkunk]] ([[User talk:KieferSkunk|talk]]) 20:12, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
  
 
;Colour
 
;Colour

Revision as of 20:12, 14 July 2014

Wildcard

Excellent description, but minor niggle: In "Superm*n' , the '*' is a wildcard. This isn't a regular expression that would match 'Superman' and Supermoon'. A regexp could be "Superm.*n" - the '.' means 'any character' and the '*' means 'as many times as you like'. (More selective regexps exist) If you were to interpret 'Superm*n' as a regular expression, it would match 'Supern' , 'Supermn', "Supermmn', Supermmmn' etc. So you could describe 'Superm*n' as a 'wildcard search that would match superman and supermoon'. 141.101.99.184 05:11, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

You're approaching this from a very specific context. You may be correct in that context, but there are plenty of different programs, protocols, languages, etc which use wildcards in various ways. I once worked as a 411 operator, and in the search software we used at the time, a search on "SUPERM*N" would have found both "Superman" and "Supermoon" if both of those were names in listings (although our supervisors would consider that too many keystrokes and would suggest "SUP*N" instead). - 108.162.242.10 05:58, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
Oops, looks like I read the initial comment too quickly, didn't realize you were kind of making the same point I wanted to, you were just being more technical about it. Either way, I think the explanation of the wildcard in the article itself should be made vague enough to avoid further threads like this. - 108.162.242.10 06:03, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
It's clearly a Unix shell file glob. Jeremyp (talk) 09:54, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
This form of wildcard is used in the Windows command prompt as well, and is very well known for Windows users. I obviously can't speak for the full XKCD audience, but limiting the scope of that wildcard to Unix seems unnecessarily exclusive. (Wouldn't it be sufficient to just refer to it as a "wildcard" as a generic concept? I mean, You Know You're a Geek When...) KieferSkunk (talk) 20:12, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
Colour

If a Trivia section is warranted for this comic, I think it should definitely be pointed out this is one of the rare strips that uses a colour other than black or white. Is there an available statistic on use of colour in xkcd? - 108.162.242.10 05:58, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Ya, I'd bite on this one. Jarod997 (talk) 12:20, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
There's a category, Category:Comics with color. --173.245.55.74 13:24, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

In a similar tune to the supermoon, could the sun at perihelion be called a "superstar"? 103.22.201.239 08:36, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Wouldn't that be the Earth at perihelion? --173.245.52.82 12:33, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
The sun at Earth's perihelion. 108.162.216.9 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Web-slingers

The comment on the title text makes it sound as though Spiderman canonically shoots webs from his body and only in "some adaptations" has a mechanical device that does so. That's backwards. The machine is the original, the biological version is what happens in "some adaptations" (ie, films).

Exactly right. I've edited the description. Also corrected the spelling of Spider-Man. 199.27.133.39 18:16, 14 July 2014 (UTC)