NAME

Conventions used in the mod_perl Documentation

Description

We use a number of conventions in this documentation, that are mostly easy to understand; if you're in doubt, look here for the explanation.

Prompts

For commands that should be typed in your shell (or your Command prompt, or whatever your OS calls it), we use the following prompts:

% ls -l

for the user-mode prompt (ie. a normal user account, with no special privileges).

# ls -l

for the superuser prompt: this means you'll have to change users to become the super user on your platform. On Unix you can use the su or sudo utilities to gain superuser privileges (provided you know the root password); on other platforms you might have to change the user -- to Administrator for example on Windows.

If you cannot obtain super user privileges, there will often be explanations about how doing the selected task without those privileges; in any other case, contact your system administrator.

On documents specific to a certain Operating System, the prompt might change. For example, in Windows documentation, we might use:

C:\> nmake

instead of any other prompt.

Typographical conventions

We try to be consisten about our use of different fonts and faces, so that you'll recognize special words more easily.

• Italic

  is used for file names or things you have to replace.

• Constant width

  is used for commands/program names, configuration items or Perl code/function names, and manpage references.

• Bold

  is used for things we want to stress.