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<title>Using as: Symbol Intro</title>
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<a name="Symbol-Intro"></a>
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<p>
Next: <a href="Statements.html#Statements" accesskey="n" rel="next">Statements</a>, Previous: <a href="Comments.html#Comments" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Comments</a>, Up: <a href="Syntax.html#Syntax" accesskey="u" rel="up">Syntax</a> [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="AS-Index.html#AS-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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<a name="Symbols-1"></a>
<h3 class="section">3.4 Symbols</h3>
<a name="index-characters-used-in-symbols"></a>
<p>A <em>symbol</em> is one or more characters chosen from the set of all
letters (both upper and lower case), digits and the three characters
‘<samp>_.$</samp>’.
On most machines, you can also use <code>$</code> in symbol names; exceptions
are noted in <a href="Machine-Dependencies.html#Machine-Dependencies">Machine Dependencies</a>.
No symbol may begin with a digit. Case is significant.
There is no length limit; all characters are significant. Multibyte characters
are supported. Symbols are delimited by characters not in that set, or by the
beginning of a file (since the source program must end with a newline, the end
of a file is not a possible symbol delimiter). See <a href="Symbols.html#Symbols">Symbols</a>.
</p>
<p>Symbol names may also be enclosed in double quote <code>"</code> characters. In such
cases any characters are allowed, except for the NUL character. If a double
quote character is to be included in the symbol name it must be preceeded by a
backslash <code>\</code> character.
<a name="index-length-of-symbols"></a>
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