Clarification of Function Templates

I'm coming from C and I'm picking up C++ pretty fast. I just have a small question about function templates. In my book it gives the following function template:

Code:

---

template < class T >
T maximum(T value1, T value2, T value3)
{
  T max = value1;

  if (value2 > max)
      max = value2;

etc.. etc..

---

My question deals with the head of the template. The book says that inside the brackets the formal type parameters are preceded either by typename or class (as it is in the example).

My question is does it matter which? And if it does matter, when do I use one or the other?

thanks

Stroustroup prefers class ("it's shorter"), typename and class are both fine by the standard, although class is pretty much the only thing used in practice, and I've even heard stories of some compiler's not recognizing the typename syntax.

However, the arguments themselves don't need to be classes are typenames, they could be, say, constant integers at compile time, but they are usually classes.

Thanks :D