vocab question

[Terry Reedy]

"Alan G Isaac" <aisaac at american.edu> wrote in message 
news:sYWdnQwcu9EhW4LbnZ2dnUVZ_gOdnZ2d at rcn.net...
| Pardon the vocab question;
| I'm not a computer science type.
| According to the Reference Manual,
| a class defintion has the structure::
|
|         classdef  ::=  "class" classname [inheritance] ":" suite
|
| What is the entire part before the suite called?
| (Just pointing to a reference is fine & helpful,
| as long as its not an entire course on BNF.)

I call it the header for the compound statement.
Same with def f(pars):

tjr