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Assignments

Identifiers allow objects to be assigned to names during the parse stage. To assign an identifier, you use name=value and to refer to an identifier, you precede its name with a backslash: `\name'. value is any valid Scheme value or any of the input-types listed above. Identifier assignments can appear at top level in the LilyPond file, but also in \paper blocks.

An identifier can be created with any string for its name, but you will only be able to refer to identifiers whose names begin with a letter, being entirely alphabetical. It is impossible to refer to an identifier whose name is the same as the name of a keyword.

The right hand side of an identifier assignment is parsed completely before the assignment is done, so it is allowed to redefine an identifier in terms of its old value, e.g.

foo = \foo * 2.0

When an identifier is referenced, the information it points to is copied. For this reason, an identifier reference must always be the first item in a block.

\paper  {
  foo = 1.0
  \paperIdent % wrong and invalid
}

\paper {
  \paperIdent % correct
  foo = 1.0 }

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Copyright (c) 1997--2001 Han-Wen Nienhuys and Jan Nieuwenhuizen.

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