Count yourself blessed if you’ve never had to spell your name over the phone. Or perhaps you’re named Mary Smith, but you live on a street or in a city you must constantly spell aloud. If so, you resort to your own spelling alphabet, something like, “N, as in Nancy” or “K, as in knife.” As a programmer, you can ease this frustration by reading this chapter, where you
- Understand the NATO phonetic alphabet and why they even bother.
- Translate words into the spelling alphabet.
- Read a file to translate words into the phonetic alphabet.
- Go backward and translate the NATO alphabet into words.
- Read a file to translate the NATO alphabet.
- Learn that natto in Japanese is a delicious, fermented soybean paste.
The last bullet point isn’t covered in this chapter. I just enjoy eating natto, and now I can write it off as a business expense.
The glorious conclusion to all this mayhem is to not only learn some new programming tricks but also proudly spell words aloud by saying “November” instead of “Nancy.”
Beyond being a handy nickname for anyone named Nathaniel, NATO stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It’s a group of countries who are members of a mutual defense pact.