structure and all depending syntax structures. Variables starting with an upper case letter may be used in the decoding process for later syntax structures without mentioning the originating syntax structure of the variable. Variables starting with a lower case letter are only used within the clause in which they are derived. In some cases, "mnemonic" names for syntax element values or variable values are used interchangeably with their numerical values. Sometimes "mnemonic" names are used without any associated numerical values. The association of values and names is specified in the text. The names are constructed from one or more groups of letters separated by an underscore character. Each group starts with an upper case letter and may contain more upper case letters. NOTE - The syntax is described in a manner that closely follows the C-language syntactic constructs. Functions that specify properties of the current position in the bitstream are referred to as syntax functions. These functions are specified in clause 7.2 and assume the existence of a bitstream pointer with an indication of the position of the next bit to be read by the decoding process from the bitstream. Syntax functions are described by their names, which are constructed as syntax element names and end with left and right round parentheses including zero or more variable names (for definition) or values (for usage), separated by commas (if more than one variable). Functions that are not syntax functions (including mathematical functions specified in clause 5.7) are described by their names, which start with an upper case letter, contain a mixture of lower and upper case letters without any underscore character, and end with left and right parentheses including zero or more variable names (for definition) or values (for usage) separated by commas (if more than one variable). Subscripts or square parentheses are used for the indexing of arrays. In reference to a visual depiction of a matrix, the first subscript is used as a row (vertical) index