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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd">
<chapter>
<header>
<copyright>
<year>2003</year><year>2015</year>
<holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder>
</copyright>
<legalnotice>
The contents of this file are subject to the Erlang Public License,
Version 1.1, (the "License"); you may not use this file except in
compliance with the License. You should have received a copy of the
Erlang Public License along with this software. If not, it can be
retrieved online at http://www.erlang.org/.
Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS"
basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See
the License for the specific language governing rights and limitations
under the License.
</legalnotice>
<title>Introduction</title>
<prepared></prepared>
<docno></docno>
<date></date>
<rev></rev>
<file>introduction.xml</file>
</header>
<marker id="erlang ref manual"></marker>
<p>This section is the Erlang reference manual. It describes the
Erlang programming language. </p>
<section>
<title>Purpose</title>
<p>The focus of the Erlang reference manual is on the language itself,
not the implementation of it. The language constructs are described in
text and with examples rather than formally specified. This is
to make the manual more readable.
The Erlang reference manual is not intended as a tutorial.</p>
<p>Information about implementation of Erlang can, for example, be found,
in the following:</p>
<list type="bulleted">
<item><p><seealso marker="doc/system_principles:system_principles">
System Principles</seealso></p>
<p>Starting and stopping, boot scripts, code loading,
<seealso marker="doc/system_principles:error_logging">
error logging</seealso>,
<seealso marker="doc/system_principles:create_target">
creating target systems</seealso></p>
</item>
<item><p><seealso marker="doc/efficiency_guide:advanced">
Efficiency Guide</seealso></p>
<p>Memory consumption, system limits</p>
</item>
<item><p>ERTS User's Guide</p>
<p><seealso marker="erts:crash_dump">Crash dumps</seealso>,
<seealso marker="erts:driver">drivers</seealso></p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Prerequisites</title>
<p>It is assumed that the reader has done some programming and
is familiar with concepts such as data types and programming
language syntax.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Document Conventions</title>
<p>In this section, the following terminology is used:</p>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>A <em>sequence</em> is one or more items. For example, a
clause body consists of a sequence of expressions. This
means that there must be at least one expression.</item>
<item>A <em>list</em> is any number of items. For example,
an argument list can consist of zero, one, or more arguments.</item>
</list>
<p>If a feature has been added recently, in Erlang 5.0/OTP R7 or
later, this is mentioned in the text.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Complete List of BIFs</title>
<p>For a complete list of BIFs, their arguments and return values,
see <seealso marker="erts:erlang#process_flag/2">erlang(3)</seealso>
manual page in ERTS.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Reserved Words</title>
<p>The following are reserved words in Erlang:</p>
<p><c>after and andalso band begin bnot bor bsl bsr bxor case catch
cond div end fun if let not of or orelse receive rem try
when xor</c></p>
</section>
</chapter>
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