The most common syntax for here documents, originating in Unix shells, is << followed by a delimiting identifier (often EOF or END[4]), followed, starting on the next line, by the text to be quoted, and then closed by the same delimiting identifier on its own line. This syntax is because here documents are formally stream literals, and the content of the document is redirected to stdin (standard input) of the preceding command; the here document syntax is by analogy with the syntax for input redirection, which is < “take input from the following file”.