{"id":107367,"date":"2022-11-08T06:53:36","date_gmt":"2022-11-08T14:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/?p=107367"},"modified":"2022-11-08T07:02:26","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T15:02:26","slug":"why-is-there-a-system-sound-called-asterisk-what-sound-does-an-asterisk-make-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20221108-36\/?p=107367","title":{"rendered":"Why is there a system sound called Asterisk? What sound does an Asterisk make anyway?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Twitter user who goes by the name ASwisstone<\/a> asked why there is a system sound called Asterisk<\/a>. Yup there it is: System.Media.System\u00adSounds.Asterisk<\/a>. What sound does an Asterisk make anyway?<\/p>\n

If you dig into the reference source, you’ll see that the SystemSound.Play<\/code> method calls SafeNativeMethods.MessageBeep<\/code><\/a> with the corresponding value MB_ICONASTERISK<\/code>.<\/p>\n

Okay, so this sound is intended to accompany an asterisk icon. But what is the asterisk icon?<\/p>\n

The MB_<\/code> prefix may be a clue. These are values that you can pass to the MessageBox<\/code> function to specify what icon should be shown in the message box, and the sound plays when a message box is shown with the corresponding icon.<\/p>\n

The documentation says that MB_ICON\u00adASTERISK<\/code> produces “An icon consisting of a lowercase letter i<\/var> in a circle.”<\/p>\n

Wait a second, that’s not an asterisk! It seems that each time we peel back a layer of the onion, the story just gets more confusing!<\/p>\n

The story starts to become less murky when you notice that the MB_ICON\u00adASTERISK<\/code> constant has the same numerical value (and same description) as the MB_ICON\u00adINFORMATION<\/code> constant.<\/p>\n

Okay, now we can put the pieces of the story together.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, there was MB_ICON\u00adASTERISK<\/code>, which presumably showed an asterisk icon. At some point, the asterisk was replaced with an information symbol \ud83d\udec8 and an alternate name for the flag was invented: MB_ICON\u00adINFORMATION<\/code>.<\/p>\n

To test this theory, I dug through the pcjs.org<\/a> archive of old versions of Windows maintained by my retired colleague and doughnut enthusiast Jeff Parsons<\/a> (Previously<\/a> about Jeff.)<\/p>\n

And lo and behold, we can see it in action: Fire up Windows 1.0<\/a>, launch Notepad, and then hit Ctrl<\/kbd>+F<\/kbd> to call up the Search dialog. Search for some nonsense string and hit Enter<\/kbd>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The asterisk was also used in Windows 2.0 (see for yourself<\/a>), but Windows 3.0 changed the icon to the information symbol. Nevertheless, the programmatic name remained “Asterisk”, for compatibility.<\/p>\n

Bonus chatter<\/b>: Mind you, Windows 1.0 didn’t have support for any sounds aside from the plain old beep from the built-in PC speaker. Multimedia sound support didn’t arrive until Windows 3.0.<\/p>\n

Bonus chatter 2<\/b>: At the same time that Asterisk became Information, the Hand was changed to a Stop sign.\u00b9 The Exclamation didn’t want to be left out of the party, even though its icon didn’t change, but at least it was renamed to Warning.<\/p>\n

\u00b9 In Windows 95, the stop sign changed to a filled red circle with a white X.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s to accompany the asterisk, back when we had an asterisk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-107367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-history"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

It’s to accompany the asterisk, back when we had an asterisk.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}