slash

A slash is used between optional or alternate elements: He refused to work with children and/or animals.Please place unwanted clothes/toys/books in the box. It may also mean "to" or "between": the academic year 2001/2002; the parent/child relationship. Slashes are used to separate numbers in fractions: 33/140 of the total weight; dates: your invoice of 9/12/04; to stand for "per": at the rate of 2 mm/sec; and in some abbreviations, e.g., c/o meaning "care of." They are also used to indicate line breaks when quoting poetry, when they are usually followed (and sometimes preceded) by a space: The weight of the world/ is love (Allen Ginsberg). In computing the slash (/) is called a forward slash to distinguish it from the backslash (\), which is used for specific purposes, e.g., to show the location of a computer file or document: c:\letters\surfclub.doc. Internet locations usually have forward slashes.