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Hi everyone, I'm a now second year computer science student. I have read through posts on Dev Rant for a while now and have loved every minute of it. I really wanted to start contributing to this awesome community and thought a question might be a good start. There seems to be a ton of inconsistencies among certain terms. The biggest that really grinds my gears is how people refer to "()", "[]", and "{}". I personally refer to the first set as parenthesis, the second as brackets, and the third as braces. Throughout my time at this college and around the internet I have read some people say curly braces, curly brackets, squigly brackets, round brackets, square braces, and my personal favorite "those curvy round things". Other students do this which is understandable, but it seemed strange that even my professors use them interchangeably. So is there a naming convention anywhere that might help with this issue or somewhere I can get some clarification?

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  • 12
    If you say normal brackets, square brackets, and curly brackets, everyone will know what you mean
  • 2
    @zacg Sounds good, normally I don't have too many issues understanding people when they have some context (i.e. pointing to a line of code). It's mostly problematic when a professor for example refers to one of them without an example and everyone sits there quietly thinking "which one?".
  • 3
    I call them exactly the same thing, the only confusion has been with UK people who call () "brackets"
  • 2
    I learnt British English so to me, () is brackets, [] are square brackets and {} are curly braces/curly brackets.
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