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I am, in a way, half of eight
but not four - not that straight.

I am, in a way, half of infinite
my location is always definite.

I can mean not only not positive for a logician
but also almost or similar for a mathematician

My origin is of Spain or Portuguese
its so easy, so please figure me out of these.

Who am I ?

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2 Answers 2

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You are

tilde (~)

I am, in a way, half of eight
but not four - not that straight.

I am, in a way, half of infinite

Refers to its shape, not a straight half of an eight because it is tipped over on its side

my location is always definite.

Probably refers to the tilde being used as root location in a URI, or to the tilde being in the same location below the escape key on different keyboard layouts.

I can mean not only not positive for a logician
but also almost or similar for a mathematician

A symbol similar to a tilde is used in mathematics and logic to indicate negation, inversion, also used to denote estimations and can mean equal to.

My origin is of Spain or Portuguese

It came into English from Spanish/Portuguese, where it is used as an accent placed over Spanish n when pronounced ny (as in señor) or Portuguese a or o when nasalized (as in São Paulo)

its so easy, so please figure me out of these.

I think I did..

Just noticed the title "You are almost there"

Which hints that the tilde is used to denote an estimation

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  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Good job, spotted on for all clues. $\endgroup$
    – Mea Culpa Nay
    Commented May 6, 2018 at 6:23
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You are

zero

I am, in a way, half of eight
but not four - not that straight.

I am, in a way, half of infinite
my location is always definite.

The symbol '0' looks like half of '8' or '∞', but isn't 4 and is a well-defined number.

I can mean not only not positive for a logician
but also almost or similar for a mathematician

In binary logic, we can think of 0 as negative or false, vs. 1 as positive or true. Also zero is not positive and arbitrarily close to negative numbers.

My origin is of Spain or Portuguese
its so easy, so please figure me out of these.

The Arabic number system reached Europe through the Iberian Peninsula, though I'm not sure about this one since you can argue for ancient India or Babylon as the place of origin.

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  • $\begingroup$ Good attempt, though fits most of the clues, missed by a couple of them. $\endgroup$
    – Mea Culpa Nay
    Commented May 6, 2018 at 5:18
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    $\begingroup$ I'm pretty sure this fits all of the clues, at least as well as the other answer. $\endgroup$
    – moopet
    Commented May 6, 2018 at 19:23
  • $\begingroup$ @moopet not the title I admit and the origin is a bit of a stretch. $\endgroup$
    – qwr
    Commented May 6, 2018 at 19:38

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