If entering a binary number, you place a % in front of it. This feature may confuseyouat first,howeverpersistence will pay offin learningthese conventions. Typeface conventions In general in these manuals, commands that you type, the names of files, and example programs, are shown in courier typeface . The names of system calls , or syscalls are generally in bold italic face. Internal variable names in system calls are generally in helvetica typeface. File conventions A ‘pathname’ is the name of a disk file or directory. A ‘relative pathname’ is the name of a directory, relative to the current one.
An ‘absolute pathname’ or ‘full pathname’ is the full specification of a file or directory’s place in the file system. The concept of ‘pathnames’ is very important, and will be explained in the section on Disks, Files and Directories. Filenames and any arguments that are optional are usually enclosed in square brackets thus [ -v] . This indicates something that you can type, to cause a certain action, but you are not forced to do so for the command to work. If more than one filename can be used in a command, the repeat action is indicated by ... Page 12 User Tutorial Manual Introduction