This section describes the format of sections when they are displayed on the screen and the special conventions used. For general conventions about manual sections and the format of sections in the printed manual, see Manual Conventions.
As you can see, GAP prints a header line containing the name of the section on the left and the name of the chapter on the right.
(If this header line ends in (not loaded) the documentation belongs to a
share package, which has not yet been loaded. See section Loading a Share Package for further information.)
<text>Text enclosed in angle brackets is used for arguments in the descriptions of functions and for other place holders. It means that you should not actually enter this text into GAP but replace it by appropriate text depending on what you want to do. For example when we write that you should enter
?section
`text'Text enclosed in single quotes is used for names of variables and functions and other text that you may actually enter into your computer and see on your screen. The text enclosed in single quotes may contain place holders enclosed in angle brackets as described above. For example when the help text for
IsPrime says that the form of the call is
IsPrime( n ) this means that you should actually
enter the strings ``IsPrime('' and ``)'', without the quotes,
but replace the
"text"Text enclosed in double quotes is used for cross references to other parts of the manual. So the text inside the double quotes is the name of another section of the manual. This is used to direct you to other sections that describe a topic or a function used in this section. So, for example, Browsing through the Sections is a cross reference to the next section.
> Oper( <arg1>, <arg2>[, <opt>] ) Fstarts a subsection on the command
Oper that takes two arguments arg1
and arg2 and an optional third argument opt.
The letter F at the end
indicates that the command is a simple function.
The letters A, P, O, C, R, and V indicate
``Attribute'', ``Property'', ``Operation'', ``Category'', ``Representation''
(see Chapter Types of Objects), or ``Variable'', respectively.
_ and ^
In mathematical formulas the underscore and the caret are used to denote
subscription and superscription. Ordinarily they apply only to the very
next character following, unless a whole expression enclosed in
parentheses follows. So, for example, x_1^(i+1) denotes the variable x
with subscript 1 raised to the power i+1.
Longer examples are usually paragraphs of their own.
Everything on the lines with the prompts gap> and >, except
the prompts themselves of course, is the input you have to type;
everything else is GAP's response.
gap> ?Format of Sections Format of Sections ______________________________________ Environment This section describes the format of sections when they are displayed on the screen and the special conventions used. ...
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GAP 4 manual