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(gawk.info)Conventions

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Typographical Conventions
=========================

   This Info file is written using Texinfo, the GNU documentation
formatting language.  A single Texinfo source file is used to produce
both the printed and online versions of the documentation.  This minor
node briefly documents the typographical conventions used in Texinfo.

   Examples you would type at the command-line are preceded by the
common shell primary and secondary prompts, `$' and `>'.  Output from
the command is preceded by the glyph "-|".  This typically represents
the command's standard output.  Error messages, and other output on the
command's standard error, are preceded by the glyph "error-->".  For
example:

     $ echo hi on stdout
     -| hi on stdout
     $ echo hello on stderr 1>&2
     error--> hello on stderr

   Characters that you type at the keyboard look `like this'.  In
particular, there are special characters called "control characters."
These are characters that you type by holding down both the `CONTROL'
key and another key, at the same time.  For example, a `Ctrl-d' is typed
by first pressing and holding the `CONTROL' key, next pressing the `d'
key and finally releasing both keys.

Dark Corners
............

     Dark corners are basically fractal -- no matter how much you
     illuminate, there's always a smaller but darker one.
     Brian Kernighan

   Until the POSIX standard (and `The Gawk Manual'), many features of
`awk' were either poorly documented or not documented at all.
Descriptions of such features (often called "dark corners") are noted
in this Info file with "(d.c.)".  They also appear in the index under
the heading "dark corner."

   As noted by the opening quote, though, any coverage of dark corners
is, by definition, something that is incomplete.