Symbols are words that have an equivalence text string associated with them. Whenever the Symbol Name is detected in the Input Stream (as part of a User response or from an Indirect Command File) it will be replaced by the equivalence text string. Symbol Names must adhere to the same syntax as Verbs and Qualifiers described previously. Thus they may be up to 32 characters in length, where only the first 8 characters are significant by default. An Application Program may modify this default however. Symbols are identified by being prefixed by the special character ``\&" (this is not part of the Symbol Name, it just identifies the remainder or the word as a Symbol Name). Thus the occurrence of the following in the Input Stream:-