[ethanbond]

I think you're missing the point. There's the shape and there's the symbol.

An octagon is a shape. A stop sign is a symbol that happens to be an octagon. Inversely, an octagon in the context of street signs represents "stop."

The octothorpe, used in music, represents "sharp." In front of a number it represents "pound." In front of a string on twitter it represents "hashtag."

AFAIK the typographical/visual differences are basically irrelevant. It's just a different symbol with a different meaning in different contexts, all represented with the same shape.

[jakobegger]

In my opinion the sharp symbol is very different from the hash symbol #. If you argue that these two are the same symbol, then so would be "d" and "q".

[dragonwriter]

> In my opinion the sharp symbol is very different from the hash symbol #.

Yes, the pound sign is different than the sharp symbol, just as single quotes are different than apostrophes, and guillemets are different than less-than and greater-than symbols, and the flat symbol is different than "b".

Now, limitations of first common US typewriters and then the ASCII character set have led to conventions where some of these have been used in place of the other because the correct symbol wasn't available, but that's different than the symbols being the same, and in most modern contexts, the correct symbol is usually available.

[tamana]

You were correct before ASCII and English keyboards and Microsoft C# gave the # an expanded role out of convenience

[Mtinie]

- sharp [1]

# ‎- octothorpe [2]

Different symbols, though very similar.

(Edit: So much so that the true sharp symbol apparently does not render correctly on HN)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_(music)

[2] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/octothorpe