A vertical ellipsis in an interactive figure or example indicates that not all of the commands and responses are shown. A lowercase italic n indicates the generic use of a number. This typeface is used in syntax to indicate variable values. Literal strings that appear in text, examples, syntax descriptions, and function definitions must be typed exactly as shown. Italicized words in syntax descriptions indicate descriptive prefixes that are intended to give additional semantic information rather than to define a separate syntactic category.
Square brackets indicate that the enclosed item is optional.
A vertical bar in DEC Ada syntax separates alternative items unless it occurs immediately after an opening brace, in which case it stands for itself. Ada is a powerful, general-purpose language that supports many modern programming practices. As developed, the language is strong in features that reduce software costs by increasing maintainability, evolvability, reliability, and portability. DEC Ada is Year 2000 compliant. DEC Ada is a production-quality implementation of the Ada programming language.