Is there a word for the ~> symbol used in Version strings?
Do you also just call it a Squiggle Arrow™ ?!
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In the Ruby community it’s often called the “pessimistic operator” or twiddle-wakka. The Elixir Version docs only refer to it as “special operator.”
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“Kinda greater”
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I’ve always thought of it as the ‘at least and safest’ which ties in with @jswanner’s “pessimistic operator” (pessimistic because you assume major updates will be breaking).
According to Google:
The most universal use of
~>is in dependency managers like RubyGems (Ruby), CocoaPods (Swift/Objective-C), and Puppet. It is known as the pessimistic version constraint operator (or “twiddle-wakka”)
That’s what I’d probably call it too, the “pessimistic version constraint operator” 
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These Ruby people must be stopped.
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I’d call it “roughly equals” or “bacon rocket”.
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I usually refer to it as “version range”, like in a peer review or something.
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As @jswanner stated, that is a twiddle-wakka, which comes from old MIT jargon-file era tirms for the tilde (a twiddle) and a bracket (a wakka).
A fun article about the origin: The Strange Case of the Twiddle-Wakka
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My assumption for the origin of the “waka” part is that > looks like Pacman’s mouth, and Pacman goes “waka waka”. I have no evidence for this.
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TIL “twiddle wakka”, that’s great.
I’ve always called it “squiggle arrow” or “squig arrow” in my head because that’s what it is in LaTeX:
\rightsquigarrow
I also really like “kinda greater” because it also works for “kinda lesser” for <~. Then again, it sorta breaks down for ~>>/<<~ as they’d be “kinda much greater”/“kinda much lesser” which seem like oxymorons.
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TIL that version string syntax components have actual names. It just occurred to me that I’ve never had to actually talk to another dev about specific syntax in a package manager config before. If it’s in code review, I just use the actual symbol since it’s in text. If we’re actually talking about it, I just say something like “pin to major version” or something because that translates to any package manager regardless of the syntax used.
I do love when I learn a new term from the Jargon File that I wasn’t aware of before though. Definitely breaking out “twiddle-wakka” at the next cocktail party (if I ever attend a cocktail party). It’s nice cause it could also double as slang for a FFX overdrive turn. Maybe Fury ~> Attack Reels or something? lol
Hahahahaha
In the version comparison context I pronounce it “compatible with”.
Out of context I call it “squiggly arrow right”.
And different contexts might change how I pronounce it.
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