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	Ctrl–Alt–Delete
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 Perspective > Show View.

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.

Alert: 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.