Throughout this manual both the input given to GAP and the output that
GAP returns are printed in typewriter font just as if they were
typed at the keyboard.
An italic font is used for keys that have no printed representation, such as e.g. the newline key and the ctl key. This font is also used for the formal parameters of functions that are described in later chapters.
A combination like ctl-P means pressing both keys, that is holding
the control key ctl and pressing the key P while ctl is still
pressed.
New terms are introduced in bold face.
In most places whitespace characters (i.e. spaces, tabs and newlines) are insignificant for the meaning of GAP input. Identifiers and keywords must however not contain any whitespace. On the other hand, sometimes there must be whitespace around identifiers and keywords to separate them from each other and from numbers. We will use whitespace to format more complicated commands for better readability.
A comment in GAP starts with the symbol # and continues to the
end of the line. Comments are treated like whitespace by GAP.
Besides of such comments which are part of the input of a GAP session, we use additional comments which are part of the manual description, but not of the respective GAP session. In the printed version of this manual these comments will be printed in a normal font for better readability, hence they start with the symbol #.
The examples of GAP sessions given in any particular chapter of this manual have been run in one continuous session, starting with the two commands
SizeScreen( [ 72, ] );
LogTo( "erg.log" );
which are used to set the line length to 72 and to save a listing of the session on some file. If you choose any chapter and rerun its examples in the given order, you should be able to reproduce our results except of a few lines of output which we have edited a little bit with respect to blanks or line breaks in order to improve the readability. However, as soon as random processes are involved, you may get different results if you extract single examples and run them separately.
GAP 3.4.4