4.3.8 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.