single quote

character "'" ASCII character 39.

Common names include single quote; quote; ITU-T: apostrophe.

Rare: prime; glitch; tick; irk; pop; INTERCAL: spark;

ITU-T: closing single quotation mark; ITU-T: acute accent.

Single quote is used in C and derived languages to introduce

a single character literal value which is represented

internally by its ASCII code. In the Unix shells and

Perl single quote is used to delimit strings in which

variable substitution is not performed (in contrast to

double-quote-delimited strings).

Single quote is often used in text for both open and close

single quotation mark and apostrophe. Typesetters use two

different symbols - open has a tail going up, close and

apostrophe have tails hanging down (like a raised comma).

Some people use back quote (`) for open single quotation

mark.

(1998-04-04)