4.6.9 Naming Conventions

groff ms uses the following conventions for names of macros, strings, and registers. External names available to documents that use the macros contain only uppercase letters and digits. The package reserves the following identifiers for internal use.

• those containing the characters *, @, and :; and
• those containing only uppercase letters and digits.

When selecting a name for your document’s own macros, registers, macros, and strings, avoid those reserved by groff ms and those defined by GNU troff. See Register Index, Macro Index, and String Index, or groff(7) for complete lists thereof.

groff ms organizes most of its internal names into modules. The naming convenion is as follows.

• Names used only within one module are of the form module*name.
• Names used outside the module in which they are defined are of the form module@name.
• Names associated with a particular environment are of the form environment:name; these are used only within the par module.
• name does not have a module prefix.
• Names constructed to implement arrays are of the form array!index.