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<a name="Working-on-input-files"></a>
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<h4 class="subsection">2.1.3 Working on input files</h4>
<p>LilyPond input files are similar to source files in many common
programming languages. They are case sensitive, and white-space
is generally ignored. Expressions are formed with curly braces
{ }, and comments are denoted with <code>%</code> or
<code>%{ ... %}</code><!-- /@w -->.
<p>If the previous sentences sound like nonsense, don't worry! We'll
explain what all these terms mean:
<a name="index-case-sensitive-63"></a>
<ul><li><strong>Case sensitive</strong>:
it matters whether you enter a letter in lower case (e.g.
<code>a, b, s, t</code><!-- /@w -->) or upper case (e.g. <code>A, B, S, T</code><!-- /@w -->).
Notes are lower case: <code>{ c d e }</code><!-- /@w --> is valid input;
<code>{ C D E }</code><!-- /@w --> will produce an error message.
<li><strong>Whitespace insensitive</strong>:
it does not matter how many spaces (or new lines) you add.
<code>{ c d e }</code><!-- /@w --> means the same thing as
<code>{ c </code> d e }<!-- /@w --> and:
<pre class="example"> { c d
e }
</pre>
<p class="noindent">Of course, the previous example is hard to read. A good rule of
thumb is to indent code blocks with either a tab or two spaces:
<pre class="example"> {
c d e
}
</pre>
<li><strong>Expressions</strong>:
every piece of LilyPond input needs to have <strong>{ curly
braces }</strong> placed around the input. These braces tell LilyPond
that the input is a single music expression, just like parentheses
<code>()</code> in mathematics. The braces should be surrounded by a
space unless they are at the beginning or end of a line to avoid
ambiguities.
<p>A LilyPond command followed by a simple expression in braces (such
as <code>\relative { }</code><!-- /@w -->) also counts as a single music
expression.
<p><a name="index-comments-64"></a><a name="index-line-comment-65"></a><a name="index-block-comment-66"></a><li><strong>Comments</strong>:
a comment is a remark for the human reader of the music input; it
is ignored while parsing, so it has no effect on the printed
output. There are two types of comments. The percent symbol
<code>%</code> introduces a line comment; anything after <code>%</code> on
that line is ignored. By convention, a line comment is placed
<em>above</em> the code it refers to.
<pre class="example"> a4 a a a
% this comment refers to the Bs
b2 b
</pre>
<p>A block comment marks a whole section of music input as a comment.
Anything that is enclosed in <code>%{</code> and <code>%}</code> is ignored.
However, block comments do not ‘nest’. This means that you
cannot place a block comment inside another block comment. If you
try, the first <code>%}</code> will terminate <em>both</em> block
comments. The following fragment shows possible uses for
comments:
<pre class="example"> % notes for twinkle twinkle follow
c4 c g' g a a g2
%{
This line, and the notes below are ignored,
since they are in a block comment.
f f e e d d c2
%}
</pre>
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This page is for LilyPond-2.11.57 (development-branch).
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