Restructuring the Nix manual

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+<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
+      xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
+      xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
+      version="5.0"
+      xml:id='ssec-values'>
+
+<title>Values</title>
+
+
+<simplesect><title>Simple Values</title>
+
+<para>Nix has the following basic data types:
+
+<itemizedlist>
+
+  <listitem>
+
+    <para><emphasis>Strings</emphasis> can be written in three
+    ways.</para>
+
+    <para>The most common way is to enclose the string between double
+    quotes, e.g., <literal>"foo bar"</literal>.  Strings can span
+    multiple lines.  The special characters <literal>"</literal> and
+    <literal>\</literal> and the character sequence
+    <literal>${</literal> must be escaped by prefixing them with a
+    backslash (<literal>\</literal>).  Newlines, carriage returns and
+    tabs can be written as <literal>\n</literal>,
+    <literal>\r</literal> and <literal>\t</literal>,
+    respectively.</para>
+
+    <para>You can include the result of an expression into a string by
+    enclosing it in
+    <literal>${<replaceable>...</replaceable>}</literal>, a feature
+    known as <emphasis>antiquotation</emphasis>.  The enclosed
+    expression must evaluate to something that can be coerced into a
+    string (meaning that it must be a string, a path, or a
+    derivation).  For instance, rather than writing
+
+<programlisting>
+"--with-freetype2-library=" + freetype + "/lib"</programlisting>
+
+    (where <varname>freetype</varname> is a derivation), you can
+    instead write the more natural
+
+<programlisting>
+"--with-freetype2-library=${freetype}/lib"</programlisting>
+
+    The latter is automatically translated to the former.  A more
+    complicated example (from the Nix expression for <link
+    xlink:href='http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt'>Qt</link>):
+
+<programlisting>
+configureFlags = "
+  -system-zlib -system-libpng -system-libjpeg
+  ${if openglSupport then "-dlopen-opengl
+    -L${mesa}/lib -I${mesa}/include
+    -L${libXmu}/lib -I${libXmu}/include" else ""}
+  ${if threadSupport then "-thread" else "-no-thread"}
+";</programlisting>
+
+    Note that Nix expressions and strings can be arbitrarily nested;
+    in this case the outer string contains various antiquotations that
+    themselves contain strings (e.g., <literal>"-thread"</literal>),
+    some of which in turn contain expressions (e.g.,
+    <literal>${mesa}</literal>).</para>
+
+    <para>The second way to write string literals is as an
+    <emphasis>indented string</emphasis>, which is enclosed between
+    pairs of <emphasis>double single-quotes</emphasis>, like so:
+
+<programlisting>
+''
+  This is the first line.
+  This is the second line.
+    This is the third line.
+''</programlisting>
+
+    This kind of string literal intelligently strips indentation from
+    the start of each line.  To be precise, it strips from each line a
+    number of spaces equal to the minimal indentation of the string as
+    a whole (disregarding the indentation of empty lines).  For
+    instance, the first and second line are indented two space, while
+    the third line is indented four spaces.  Thus, two spaces are
+    stripped from each line, so the resulting string is
+
+<programlisting>
+"This is the first line.\nThis is the second line.\n  This is the third line.\n"</programlisting>
+
+    </para>
+
+    <para>Note that the whitespace and newline following the opening
+    <literal>''</literal> is ignored if there is no non-whitespace
+    text on the initial line.</para>
+
+    <para>Antiquotation
+    (<literal>${<replaceable>expr</replaceable>}</literal>) is
+    supported in indented strings.</para>
+
+    <para>Since <literal>${</literal> and <literal>''</literal> have
+    special meaning in indented strings, you need a way to quote them.
+    <literal>${</literal> can be escaped by prefixing it with
+    <literal>''</literal> (that is, two single quotes), i.e.,
+    <literal>''${</literal>.  <literal>''</literal> can be escaped by
+    prefixing it with <literal>'</literal>, i.e.,
+    <literal>'''</literal>.  Finally, linefeed, carriage-return and
+    tab characters can be written as <literal>''\n</literal>,
+    <literal>''\r</literal>, <literal>''\t</literal>.</para>
+
+    <para>Indented strings are primarily useful in that they allow
+    multi-line string literals to follow the indentation of the
+    enclosing Nix expression, and that less escaping is typically
+    necessary for strings representing languages such as shell scripts
+    and configuration files because <literal>''</literal> is much less
+    common than <literal>"</literal>.  Example:
+
+<programlisting>
+stdenv.mkDerivation {
+  <replaceable>...</replaceable>
+  postInstall =
+    ''
+      mkdir $out/bin $out/etc
+      cp foo $out/bin
+      echo "Hello World" > $out/etc/foo.conf
+      ${if enableBar then "cp bar $out/bin" else ""}
+    '';
+  <replaceable>...</replaceable>
+}
+</programlisting>
+
+    </para>
+
+    <para>Finally, as a convenience, <emphasis>URIs</emphasis> as
+    defined in appendix B of <link
+    xlink:href='http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt'>RFC 2396</link>
+    can be written <emphasis>as is</emphasis>, without quotes.  For
+    instance, the string
+    <literal>"http://example.org/foo.tar.bz2"</literal>
+    can also be written as
+    <literal>http://example.org/foo.tar.bz2</literal>.</para>
+
+  </listitem>
+
+  <listitem><para><emphasis>Integers</emphasis>, e.g.,
+  <literal>123</literal>.</para></listitem>
+
+  <listitem><para><emphasis>Paths</emphasis>, e.g.,
+  <filename>/bin/sh</filename> or <filename>./builder.sh</filename>.
+  A path must contain at least one slash to be recognised as such; for
+  instance, <filename>builder.sh</filename> is not a
+  path<footnote><para>It's parsed as an expression that selects the
+  attribute <varname>sh</varname> from the variable
+  <varname>builder</varname>.</para></footnote>.  If the file name is
+  relative, i.e., if it does not begin with a slash, it is made
+  absolute at parse time relative to the directory of the Nix
+  expression that contained it.  For instance, if a Nix expression in
+  <filename>/foo/bar/bla.nix</filename> refers to
+  <filename>../xyzzy/fnord.nix</filename>, the absolute path is
+  <filename>/foo/xyzzy/fnord.nix</filename>.</para></listitem>
+
+  <listitem><para><emphasis>Booleans</emphasis> with values
+  <literal>true</literal> and
+  <literal>false</literal>.</para></listitem>
+
+  <listitem><para>The null value, denoted as
+  <literal>null</literal>.</para></listitem>
+
+</itemizedlist>
+
+</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+<simplesect><title>Lists</title>
+
+<para>Lists are formed by enclosing a whitespace-separated list of
+values between square brackets.  For example,
+
+<programlisting>
+[ 123 ./foo.nix "abc" (f { x = y; }) ]</programlisting>
+
+defines a list of four elements, the last being the result of a call
+to the function <varname>f</varname>.  Note that function calls have
+to be enclosed in parentheses.  If they had been omitted, e.g.,
+
+<programlisting>
+[ 123 ./foo.nix "abc" f { x = y; } ]</programlisting>
+
+the result would be a list of five elements, the fourth one being a
+function and the fifth being a set.</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+<simplesect><title>Sets</title>
+
+<para>Sets are really the core of the language, since ultimately the
+Nix language is all about creating derivations, which are really just
+sets of attributes to be passed to build scripts.</para>
+
+<para>Sets are just a list of name/value pairs (called
+<emphasis>attributes</emphasis>) enclosed in curly brackets, where
+each value is an arbitrary expression terminated by a semicolon.  For
+example:
+
+<programlisting>
+{ x = 123;
+  text = "Hello";
+  y = f { bla = 456; };
+}</programlisting>
+
+This defines a set with attributes named <varname>x</varname>,
+<varname>text</varname>, <varname>y</varname>.  The order of the
+attributes is irrelevant.  An attribute name may only occur
+once.</para>
+
+<para>Attributes can be selected from a set using the
+<literal>.</literal> operator.  For instance,
+
+<programlisting>
+{ a = "Foo"; b = "Bar"; }.a</programlisting>
+
+evaluates to <literal>"Foo"</literal>.  It is possible to provide a
+default value in an attribute selection using the
+<literal>or</literal> keyword.  For example,
+
+<programlisting>
+{ a = "Foo"; b = "Bar"; }.c or "Xyzzy"</programlisting>
+
+will evaluate to <literal>"Xyzzy"</literal> because there is no
+<varname>c</varname> attribute in the set.</para>
+
+<para>You can use arbitrary double-quoted strings as attribute
+names:
+
+<programlisting>
+{ "foo ${bar}" = 123; "nix-1.0" = 456; }."foo ${bar}"
+</programlisting>
+
+This will evaluate to <literal>123</literal> (Assuming
+<literal>bar</literal> is antiquotable). In the case where an
+attribute name is just a single antiquotation, the quotes can be
+dropped:
+
+<programlisting>
+{ foo = 123; }.${bar} or 456 </programlisting>
+
+This will evaluate to <literal>123</literal> if
+<literal>bar</literal> evaluates to <literal>"foo"</literal> when
+coerced to a string and <literal>456</literal> otherwise (again
+assuming <literal>bar</literal> is antiquotable).</para>
+
+<para>In the special case where an attribute name inside of a set declaration
+evaluates to <literal>null</literal> (which is normally an error, as
+<literal>null</literal> is not antiquotable), that attribute is simply not
+added to the set:
+
+<programlisting>
+{ ${if foo then "bar" else null} = true; }</programlisting>
+
+This will evaluate to <literal>{}</literal> if <literal>foo</literal>
+evaluates to <literal>false</literal>.</para>
+
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+</section>
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