REFERENCE:

NAMING CONVENTIONS:


CONVENTIONS USED IN THE LANGUAGE.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

System:  In Eiffel terminology a "system" refers to a group of classes
         put together to produce a single exectable program. Thus a
		system will have, at runtime, one or more objects. There
		is always a special object, called "the root" that is the
		entry point into the system.

Cluster:  A cluster is a group of classes that are considered to be
          related in some way. In phyisical terms, a cluster is a
          directory containg class source files.

		Cluster names are case in-sensitive.

Universe: 
		When a system is defined it will require one or more clusters
		from which to draw classes. This is said to be the universe
		for that system.

		A universe is defined in a Lace file for a given system.


Classes:	All class names used in Eiffelsource code should be in upper case.
		Each class name will relate to a source file found in a cluster
		belonging to the universe of the system being built.

		A class must have a source code file in the cluster to which it
          belongs.  All class source code files should have a ".e" extension
		and be in lower case (assuming the operation system supports
		uppper and lower case).

		When a class is defined, it's name must match that of the file it
		is in.

		A class name can be up to to 30 characters in length, thereby 
		exceeding the maximumn file name length of many operating systems.
		(MSDOS, for example, only supports file names of upto 8 characters).

		To overcome the obvious difficulties of readablilty and portibilty
		that such restrictions bring, a class name alias feature is 
		available. This file contains a list of class names and their
		associated file names.

		Example:
	
			intrinsic/alias.dir
			--------------------------
			| LINKED_LIST	link_lst	|
			| ASCII_WINDOW	awindow	|
			--------------------------
			
		LINKED LIST and ASCII_WINDOW are class names and link_lst and
		awindow are their corrisponding file names.

		If a class name appears twice in a system a warning will be
		displayed when the system is compiled.

		Note: When a root class is compiled, a stub program is produced
		which :

variables:
		Variable names are not case sensitive.
		


clusters:






CONVENTIONS USED IN THE DOCUMENTATION
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The documentation uses Unix conventions and styles. Most MSDOS C++ compilers
support similar conventions even if the operation system does not.


Path names:

	Path names given as MSDOS \ characters are converted to Unix / format
	throughout. 

	File names of greater than 8 characters will be truncated on MSDOS.

Environment:

	Environment variables are accessed via a $ leadin character where
	applicable:

	Example:
		$(EON)

	can be used to subsitute the EON environment variable. This applies
	to MSDOS and Unix.

