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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="latin1" ?>
+<!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd">
+
+<chapter>
+ <header>
+ <copyright>
+ <year>2003</year><year>2009</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>
+
+ <section>
+ <title>Purpose</title>
+ <p>This reference manual describes the Erlang programming
+ language. The focus is on the language itself, not
+ the implementation. The language constructs are described in
+ text and with examples rather than formally specified, with
+ the intention to make the manual more readable.
+ The manual is not intended as a tutorial.</p>
+ <p>Information about this implementation of Erlang can be found, for
+ example, in <em>System Principles</em> (starting and stopping,
+ boot scripts, code loading, error logging, creating target
+ systems), <em>Efficiency Guide</em> (memory consumption, system
+ limits) and <em>ERTS User's Guide</em> (crash dumps, drivers).</p>
+ </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 the document, 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,
+ refer to <c>erlang(3)</c>.</p>
+ </section>
+
+ <section>
+ <title>Reserved Words</title>
+ <p>The following are reserved words in Erlang:</p>
+ <p>after and andalso band begin bnot bor bsl bsr bxor case catch
+ cond div end fun if let not of or orelse query receive rem try
+ when xor</p>
+ </section>
+
+ <section>
+ <title>Character Set</title>
+ <p>In Erlang 4.8/OTP R5A the syntax of Erlang tokens was extended to
+ allow the use of the full ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) character set. This
+ is noticeable in the following ways:</p>
+ <list type="bulleted">
+ <item>
+ <p>All the Latin-1 printable characters can be used and are
+ shown without the escape backslash convention.</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>Atoms and variables can use all Latin-1 letters.</p>
+ </item>
+ </list>
+ <table>
+ <row>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle"><em>Octal</em></cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle"><em>Decimal</em></cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">&nbsp;</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle"><em>Class</em></cell>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">200 - 237</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">128 - 159</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">&nbsp;</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">Control characters</cell>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">240 - 277</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">160 - 191</cell>
+ <cell align="right" valign="middle">- &iquest;</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">Punctuation characters</cell>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">300 - 326</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">192 - 214</cell>
+ <cell align="center" valign="middle">&Agrave; - &Ouml;</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">Uppercase letters</cell>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <cell align="center" valign="middle">327</cell>
+ <cell align="center" valign="middle">215</cell>
+ <cell align="center" valign="middle">&times;</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">Punctuation character</cell>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">330 - 336</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">216 - 222</cell>
+ <cell align="center" valign="middle">&Oslash; - &THORN;</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">Uppercase letters</cell>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">337 - 366</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">223 - 246</cell>
+ <cell align="center" valign="middle">&szlig; - &ouml;</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">Lowercase letters</cell>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <cell align="center" valign="middle">367</cell>
+ <cell align="center" valign="middle">247</cell>
+ <cell align="center" valign="middle">&divide;</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">Punctuation character</cell>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">370 - 377</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">248 - 255</cell>
+ <cell align="center" valign="middle">&oslash; - &yuml;</cell>
+ <cell align="left" valign="middle">Lowercase letters</cell>
+ </row>
+ <tcaption>Character Classes.</tcaption>
+ </table>
+ </section>
+</chapter>
+