Conventions Used in This Book

The following is a list of typographical conventions used in this book:

Italic

Used to indicate new terms, URLs, filenames, file extensions, directories, commands and options, and program names, and to highlight comments in examples. For example, a path in the filesystem may appear as C:\Hacks\examples or /usr/mike/hacks/examples.

Constant width

Used to show code examples, XML markup, Java package or C# namespace names, or output from commands.

Constant width bold

Used in examples to show emphasis.

Constant width italic

Used in examples to show text that should be replaced with user-supplied values.

[RETURN]

A carriage return ([RETURN]) at the end of a line of code is used to denote an unnatural line break; that is, you should not enter these as two lines of code, but as one continuous line. Multiple lines are used in these cases due to page-width constraints.

You should pay special attention to notes set apart from the text with the following icons:

This is a tip, suggestion, or general note. It contains useful supplementary information about the topic at hand.

This is a warning or a note of caution.

The thermometer icons, found next to each hack, indicate the relative complexity of the hack: