Typographical conventions
Throughout this manual, we use certain typographical conventions to distinguish technical terms. In general, the conventions we use conform to those found in IEEE POSIX publications.
The following table summarizes our conventions:
| Reference | Example |
|---|---|
| Code examples | if (stream == NULL) |
| Command options | -lR |
| Commands | make |
| Constants | NULL |
| Data types | unsigned short |
| Environment variables | PATH |
| File and pathnames | /dev/null |
| Function names | exit() |
| Keyboard chords | CtrlAltDelete |
| Keyboard input | Username |
| Keyboard keys | Enter |
| Program output | login: |
| Variable names | stdin |
| Parameters | parm1 |
| User-interface components | Navigator |
| Window title | Options |
We use an arrow in directions for accessing menu items, like this:
- You'll find the Other... menu item under .
We use notes, cautions, and warnings to highlight important messages:
Note:
Notes point out something important or useful.
CAUTION:
Cautions tell you about commands or procedures that may have unwanted or undesirable side effects.
DANGER:
Warnings tell you about commands or procedures that could be dangerous to your files,
your hardware, or even yourself.
Notice:
Alerts tell you about commands or procedures that could expose private information or otherwise compromise security.
Note to Windows users
In our documentation, we typically use a forward slash (/) as a delimiter in pathnames, including those pointing to Windows files. We also generally follow POSIX/UNIX filesystem conventions.
Page updated: