There is a downside to using "h"/"H" from a UX perspective - taking up more
space and appearing as alphanumeric characters similar to the path numbers,
they make derivation paths and descriptors more difficult to read. Also,
although not as important, less efficient when making metal backups.

On Sat, Jul 3, 2021 at 7:13 AM Andrew Chow via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> On 7/2/21 11:24 PM, David A. Harding wrote:
> > Is there any chance we can take this opportunity to make "h"/"H" the
> > preferred aliases?  Using "'" in bourne-style shells is very
> > annoying[1], and I suspect it's also creating unnecessary complications
> > elsewhere.
> I've updated the text to use "h".
> > Alternatives:
> >
> > - Completely kill "'" (I'd prefer this, but I realize it's complicated
> >    with descriptors already being used widely).  If "h"/"H" are made the
> >    preferred aliases, maybe it'd be enough to make implementing "'" a
> >    SHOULD rather than a MUST; this would push implementations towards
> >    displaying descriptors using the h versions for maximum compatibility.
> Since there already are software implementing descriptors, I don't think
> we can do this. I'm not sure about making "'" a SHOULD either.
> > - Calculate the checksum over s/(h|H)/'/ (again, I know that's
> >    complicated with descriptors already widely used)
> This has been discussed in the past and the conclusion was that the
> checksum should be strictly over the string itself. This would allow for
> dumb checksum checkers which don't have to be able to parse descriptors
> in order to check the checksum.
>
> Thanks,
> Andrew
>
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > -Dave
> >
> > [1]
> https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/15740#issuecomment-695815432
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>