Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, commands and their options, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, branch and tag names, dummy URLs, user input, environment variables, configuration options and their values are shown as follows: "For example, writing git log -- foo explicitly asks for the history of a path foo."

Additionally, the following convention is used: <file> denotes user input (here, the name of a file), $HOME denotes the value of environment variable, and tilde in a pathname is used to denote user's home directory (for example ~/.gitignore).

A block of code, or a fragment of a configuration file, is set as follows:

void init_rand(void)
{
    srand(time(NULL));
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block (which is quite rare), the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

void init_rand(void)
{
    srand(time(NULL));
}

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

carol@server ~$ mkdir -p /srv/git
carol@server ~$ cd /srv/git
carol@server /srv/git$ git init --bare random.git

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "The default description that Git gives to a stash (WIP on branch)."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.