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5.8 Registers

In the roff language, numbers and measurements can be stored in registers. Many built-in registers exist, supplying anything from the date to details of formatting parameters; some of these are read-only. You can also define your own. See Identifiers, for information on constructing a valid name for a register.

Each register (except read-only ones) can be assigned a format, causing its value to interpolate with leading zeroes, in Roman numerals, or alphabetically. Some read-only registers are string-valued, meaning that they interpolate text and lack a format.