Re: Description of the naming conventions for variables, macros, etc in MS?

[G. Branden Robinson]

At 2020-08-06T12:05:54-0400, T. Kurt Bond wrote:
> Is there a description of the naming conventions used in the groff ms
> macros for variables, macros, and so forth?  An * seems to mean
> internal and ! seems to mean array, for instance.  What does @ mean?

You can find this information in the "Naming Conventions" node of the ms
chapter of our Texinfo manual.

Here it is in text form.

(N.B., this material is not in the ms version of the document Larry
recently supplied; it will need to be backported.  I'll go over the
Texinfo chapter carefully to bring ms.ms up to date before deleting the
Texinfo chapter as described in my Grand Plan(tm)[1].)

4.6.8 Naming Conventions
------------------------

The following conventions are used for names of macros, strings and
number registers.  External names available to documents that use the
'groff -ms' macros contain only uppercase letters and digits.

   Internally the macros are divided into modules; naming conventions
are as follows:

   * Names used only within one module are of the form MODULE'*'NAME.

   * Names used outside the module in which they are defined are of the
     form MODULE'@'NAME.

   * Names associated with a particular environment are of the form
     ENVIRONMENT':'NAME; these are used only within the 'par' module.

   * NAME does not have a module prefix.

   * Constructed names used to implement arrays are of the form
     ARRAY'!'INDEX.

   Thus the groff ms macros reserve the following names:

   * Names containing the characters '*', '@', and ':'.

   * Names containing only uppercase letters and digits.

Regards,
Branden

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2020-06/msg00044.html

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature