Conventions Used in This Book

This desktop quick reference follows certain typographical conventions:

Bold

Used for commands, programs, and options. All terms shown in bold are typed literally.

Italic

Used to show arguments and variables that should be replaced with user-supplied values. Italic is also used to indicate filenames and directories and to highlight comments in examples.

Constant Width

Used to show the contents of files or the output from commands.

Constant Width Bold

Used in examples and tables to show commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.

Constant Width Italic

Used in examples and tables to show text that should be replaced with user-supplied values.

#, $

Used in some examples as the root shell prompt (#) and as the user prompt ($) under the Bourne or bash shell.

On the Exam These provide information about areas you should focus on when studying for the exam.

These signify a tip, suggestion, or general note.

These indicate a warning or caution.

A final word about syntax: in many cases, the space between an option and its argument can be omitted. In other cases, the spacing (or lack of spacing) must be followed strictly. For example, -wn (no intervening space) might be interpreted differently from -w n. It's important to notice the spacing used in option syntax.