optional

optional — Optional information.

Synopsis

optional ::= [-]

Description

The optional element indicates that a specified argument, option, or other text is optional. The precise meaning of “optional” varies according to the application or process being documented.

Processing expectations

Formatted inline.

Parents

These elements contain optional: bridgehead, citation, citetitle, emphasis (db.emphasis), entry, firstterm (db.firstterm), glosssee, glossseealso, glossterm (db.glossterm), line, link, literallayout, member, olink, orgdiv, para, phrase (db.phrase), primary, quote (db.quote), remark, secondary, see, seealso, simpara, subtitle, term, termdef, tertiary, title, titleabbrev.

Children

The following elements occur in optional: text, abbrev, acronym, alt, anchor, biblioref, coref, date, emphasis (db._emphasis), firstterm (db._firstterm), footnote, footnoteref, foreignphrase (db._foreignphrase), glossterm (db._glossterm), indexterm (db.indexterm.endofrange), indexterm (db.indexterm.singular), indexterm (db.indexterm.startofrange), inlinemediaobject, link, olink, phrase (db._phrase), quote (db._quote), remark, subscript, superscript, trademark, wordasword, xref.

See Also

computeroutput, constant, literal, markup, option, parameter, prompt, replaceable, tag, userinput, varname

Examples

<article xmlns='http://docbook.org/ns/docbook'>
<title>Example optional</title>

<synopsis>
ls <option>-abcCdfFgilLmnopqrRstux1</option>
   <optional>names</optional>
</synopsis>

</article>

ls -abcCdfFgilLmnopqrRstux1
   names
Last revised by Norman Walsh on (git hash: c3457cab689d8fd89ba4252de204cf9a14e40acd 6a501344525f32f9834f0e4a5c3c3f8131803fa4 47fe34b28bad7941a61b9c1c17d47f6eed36cd04)