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Conventions
There are a certain set of typographical conventions used by technical
writers the world over that I will be employing for this primer. Here is a
reference to what they mean:
- $ prompt
- For commands that are to be typed in to the unix shell, we like to
prefix a $ to indicate the unix prompt. Your prompt may be completely
different. You should not type in the $ when trying the command on your
system.
- ^x
- The ^ is called the caret, and when combined with a single letter,
usually indicates that you should hold the [Ctrl] key while pressing
that letter. For example, ^c means hold [Ctrl] while pressing 'c'.
- C-x and M-x
- This syntax is used most often in the emacs editor (described later)
and indicates that you must hold down either the [Ctrl] key or the
[Alt] key while pressing another key. For example, to exit from emacs,
you much type C-x followed by C-c, in other words, hold [Ctrl] while
pressing x then c
- example boxes
- Most examples will be in a blue-background box,
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Vocabulary
This should be pretty common knowledge, but it is good to set down some
conventions on what to call various characters on the keyboard, so if somebody
tells you over the phone to type in hash bang slash bin slash perl you know
they mean '#!/bin/perl'
| ! |
bang (because 'exclamation point' is just too many syllables.) |
| @ |
at |
| # |
hash (also known as the sharp) |
| % |
percent (pretty common usage, shouldn't surprise anybody) |
| ^ |
caret |
| & |
ampersand |
| * |
star (or asterisk) |
| () |
open and close parenthesis |
| {} |
open and close curly braces |
| [] |
open and close brackets |
| <> |
open and close angle brackets |
| / |
slash (also forward-slash) |
| \ |
backslash |
| | |
pipe |
| ~ |
tilde |
| ' |
quote or single quote |
| ` |
backquote or backtick (If this isn't clear in your browser,
this is the quote on the tilde (~) key |
| " |
double-quote |
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