Appendix D Metasymbols

Within this document, the following metasyntactic conventions will be used when discussing command line options, commands, arguments and templates:

n

Argument is not optional and n must be a valid number.

e|t|dvar

Argument is not optional and must be a single alphabetic character.

$tvar

Argument is not optional and must be a single alphabetic character, that is lead by a ‘$’ character.

[text]

Argument is optional and text is a valid string of text.

[ab]

Arguments are optional, any number may be used in any order, e.g.:

NOTHING, a, b, ab, ba …

{ab}

Arguments are not optional, minimum one up to any number may be used in any order, e.g.:

a, b, ab, ba …

[a|b]

Arguments are optional, select either a or b, but not both.

a|b

Arguments are not optional, select either a or b, but not both.

[a[b]]

Arguments are optional, select either a or ab, but not b.

[a|b[c]]

Arguments are optional, select a or b or ac or bc, but not c.

[a|bc]

Arguments are optional, select either ac or bc, but not a or b or c.

[a]|[b]

Argument lists are optional, select either list a or list b, but not both.

[…]

Additional arguments/files may be specified and are optional.