_THE LINUX MAN-PAGE-HOWTO_
Copyright 1995,96,97,98 by Jens Schweikhardt, email:
<schweikh@noc.dfn.de>
http://www.shuttle.de/schweikh/home.html
See further information on copying conditions below.
Last update: March 1998. Click here to browse the author's latest
version of this document. Corrections and suggestions welcome!
This HOWTO explains what you should bear in mind when you are going to
write on-line documentation -- a so called man page -- that you want
to make accessible via the man(1) command. Throughout this HOWTO, a
manual entry is simply referred to as a man page, regardless of actual
length and without sexist intention.
_Table of contents_
* 0) A few thoughts on documentation
* 1) How are man pages accessed?
* 2) How should a formatted man page look like?
* 3) How do I document several programs/functions in a single man
page?
* 4) Which macro package should I use?
* 5) What preprocessors may I use?
* 6) Should I distribute source and/or already formatted
documentation?
* 7) What are the font conventions?
* 8) How do I polish my man page?
* 9) How do I get a plain text man page without all that ^H^_ stuff?
* 10) How do I get a high quality PostScript man page?
* 11) How do I get apropos and whatis to work?
* A) Copying conditions
_0) A few thoughts on documentation_
Why do we write documentation? Silly question. Because we want others
to be able to use our program, library function or whatever we have
written and made available. But writing documentation is not all there
is to it:
* Documentation must be accessible. If it's hidden in some
non-standard place where the documentation related tools won't
find it -- how can it serve its purpose?
* documentation must be reliable and accurate. There's nothing more
annoying than having program behaviour and documentation disagree.
Users will curse you, send you hate mail and throw your work into
the bit bucket, with the firm intent to never install anything
written by that jerk again.
The historical and well known way documentation is accessed on UNIX is
via the man(1) command. This HOWTO describes what you have to do to
write a man page that will be correctly processed by the documentation
related tools. The most important of these tools are man(1), xman(1x),
apropos(1), makewhatis(8) and catman(8). Reliability and accuracy of
the information are, of course, up to you. But even in this respect
you will find some ideas below that help you avoid some common
glitches.
_1) How are man pages accessed? _
You need to know the precise mechanism how man pages are accessed in
order to give your man page the right name and install it in the right
place. Any man page belongs to a specific section, which is denoted by
a single character. The most common sections under Linux and their
human readable names are
Section The human readable name
1 User commands that may be started by everyone.
2 System calls, that is, functions provided by the kernel.
3 Subroutines, that is, library functions.
4 Devices, that is, special files in the /dev directory.
5 File format descriptions, e.g. /etc/passwd.
6 Games, self-explanatory.
7 Miscellaneous, e.g. macro packages, conventions.
8 System administration tools that only root can execute.
9 Another (Linux specific) place for kernel routine documentation.
n New documentation, that may be moved to a more appropriate section.
o Old documentation, that may be kept for a grace period.
l Local documentation referring to this particular system.
The name of the source file for a man page (the input to the
formatting system) is the name of the command, function or file name,
followed by a dot, followed by the section. If you write the
documentation on the format of the `passwd' file you have to name the
source file `passwd.5'. Here we also have an example of a file name
that is the same as a command name. There might be even a library
subroutine named passwd. Sectioning is the usual way to resolve these
ambiguities: The command description is found in the file `passwd.1'
and the hypothetical library subroutine in `passwd.3'.
Sometimes additional characters are appended and the file name
looks for example like `xterm.1x' or `wish.1tk'. The intent is to
indicate that this is documentation for an X Window program or a
Tk application, respectively. Some manual browsers can make use of
this additional information. For example xman will use `xterm(x)'
and `wish(tk)' in the list of available documentation.
Please don't use the n, o and l sections; according to the File System
Standard these sections are deprecated. Stick to the numeric sections.
Beware of name clashes with existing programs, functions or file
names. It is certainly a bad idea to write yet another editor and call
it ed, sed (for smart ed) or red (for Rocky's ed). By making sure your
program's name is unique you avoid that someone executes your program
and reads someone else's man page or vice versa. Checking out the lsm
database on a program name is a place to start doing so.
Now we know the name to give our file. The next decision is which
directory it will finally get installed (say, when the user runs `make
install' for your package.) On Linux, all man pages are below
directories mentioned in the environment variable MANPATH. The doc
related tools use it quite similar like the shell uses PATH to locate
executables. In fact, MANPATH has the same format as PATH. Both hold a
colon separated list of directories (with the exception that MANPATH
does not allow empty fields and relative pathnames but has absolute
names only.) If MANPATH is not set or not exported, a default will be
used that contains at least the /usr/man directory. To speed up the
search and to keep directories small, the directories specified by
MANPATH (the so called base directories) contain a bunch of
subdirectories named `man<s>' where <s> stands for the one character
section introduced in the table above. Not all of the sections may be
represented by a subdirectory because there simply is no reason to
keep an empty `mano' subdirectory. However, there may be directories
named `cat<s>', `dvi<s>' and `ps<s>' which hold documentation that is
ready to display or print. More on this later. The only other file in
any base directory should be a file named `whatis'. The purpose and
creation of this file will also be described under paragraph 11). The
safest way to have a man page for section <s> installed in the right
place is to put it in the directory /usr/man/man<s>. A good Makefile,
however, will allow the user to chose a base directory, by means of a
make variable, MANDIR, say. Most of the GNU packages can be configured
with the --prefix=/what/ever option. The manuals will then be
installed under the base directory /what/ever/man. I suggest you also
provide a way to do something similar.
With the advent of the Linux File System Standard (FS-Stnd), things
became more complicated. The FS-Stnd 1.2 states that
"Provisions must be made in the structure of /usr/man to support
manual pages which are written in different (or multiple)
languages."
This is achieved by introducing another directory level that
distinguishes between different languages. Quoting again from FS-Stnd
1.2:
"This naming of language subdirectories of /usr/man is based on
Appendix E of the POSIX 1003.1 standard which describes the locale
identification string -- the most well accepted method to describe
a cultural environment. The <locale> string is:
<language>[_<territory>][.<character-set>][,<version>]"
(See the FS-Stnd for a few common <locale> strings.) According to
these guidelines, we have our man pages in
/usr/man/<locale>/man[1-9lno]. The formatted versions should then be
in /usr/man/<locale>/cat[1-9lno] of course, otherwise we could only
provide them for a single locale. HOWEVER, I can not recommend
switching to that structure at this time. The FS-Stnd 1.2 also allows
that
"Systems which use a unique language and code set for all manual
pages may omit the <locale> substring and store all manual pages
in <mandir>. For example, systems which only have English manual
pages coded with ASCII, may store manual pages (the man[1-9]
directories) directly in /usr/man. (That is the traditional
circumstance and arrangement in fact.)"
I would not switch until all tools (like xman, tkman, info and many
others that read man pages) can cope with the new structure.
_2) How should a formatted man page look like?_
Let me present you an example. Below I will explain it in detail. If
you read this as plain text it won't show the different typefaces
(_bold _and _italics_). Please refer to the paragraph "What are the
font conventions?" for further explanations. Here comes the man page
for the (hypothetical) foo program.
FOO(1) User Manuals FOO(1)
_NAME
_ foo - frobnicate the bar library
_SYNOPSIS
_ _foo [-bar] [-c_ _config-file_ _]_ _file_ _...
DESCRIPTION
_ _foo_ frobnicates the bar library by tweaking internal symbol
tables. By default it parses all baz segments and rearranges
them in reverse order by time for the _xyzzy_(1) linker to
find them. The symdef entry is then compressed using the WBG
(Whiz-Bang-Gizmo) algorithm. All files are processed in the
order specified.
_OPTIONS
_ -b Do not write `busy' to stdout while processing.
-c config-file
Use the alternate system wide _config-file_ instead of
_/etc/foo.conf_. This overrides any _FOOCONF_ environment
variable.
-a In addition to the baz segments, also parse the blurfl
headers.
-r Recursive mode. Operates as fast as lightning at the
expense of a megabyte of virtual memory.
_FILES
_ _/etc/foo.conf
_ The system wide configuration file. See _foo_(5) for fur-
ther details.
_~/.foorc
_ Per user configuration file. See _foo_(5) for further
details.
_ENVIRONMENT
_ FOOCONF
If non-null the full pathname for an alternate system
wide _foo.conf_. Overridden by the -c option.
_DIAGNOSTICS
_ The following diagnostics may be issued on stderr:
Bad magic number.
The input file does not look like an archive file.
Old style baz segments.
foo can only handle new style baz segments. COBOL
object libraries are not supported in this version.
_BUGS
_ The command name should have been chosen more carefully to
reflect its purpose.
_AUTHOR
_ Jens Schweikhardt <schweikh@noc.dfn.de>
_SEE ALSO
_ _bar_(1), _foo_(5), _xyzzy_(1)
Linux Last change: MARCH 1995 2
Here's the explanation as I promised.
_The NAME section_
...is the only required section. Man pages without a name section are
as useful as refrigerators at the north pole. This section also has a
standardized format consisting of a comma separated list of program or
function names followed by a dash followed by a short (usually one
line) description what functionality the program (function, file) is
supposed to provide. By means of makewhatis(8) the name sections make
it into the whatis database files. Makewhatis is the reason why the
name section must exist and why it must adhere to the format I
described. In the groff source it must look like
.SH NAME foo \- frobnicate the bar library
The \- is of importance here. The backslash is needed to make the dash
distinct from a hyphenation dash that may appear in either the command
name or the one line description.
_The SYNOPSIS section_
...is intended to give a short overview on available program options.
For functions this sections lists corresponding include files and the
prototype so the programmer knows the type and number of arguments as
well as the return type.
_The DESCRIPTION section _
...gives an eloquent explanation why your sequence of 0s and 1s is
worth anything at all. Here's where you write down all your knowledge.
This is the Hall Of Fame. Win other programmer's and user's admiration
by making this section the source of reliable and detailed
information. Explain what the arguments are for, the file format, what
algorithms do the dirty jobs.
_The OPTIONS section_
...gives a description for any option how it affects program
behaviour. You knew that, didn't you?
_The FILES section_
...lists files the program or function uses. For example,
configuration files, startup files, files the program directly
operates on. It is a good idea to give the full pathname of these
files and to make the install process modify the directory part to
match user preferences: the groff manuals have a default prefix of
/usr/local, so they reference /usr/local/lib/groff/* by default.
However, if you install using 'make prefix=/opt/gnu' the references in
the man page change to /opt/gnu/lib/groff/*
_The ENVIRONMENT section _
...lists all environment variables that affect your program or
function and tells how, of course. Most commonly the variables will
hold pathnames, filenames or default options.
_The DIAGNOSTICS section_
...should give an overview of the most common error messages from your
program and how to cope with them. There's no need to explain system
error error messages (from perror(3)) or fatal signals (from
psignal(3)) as they can appear during execution of any program.
_The BUGS section _
...should ideally be non-existent. If you're brave, you can describe
here limitations, known inconveniences, features that others may
regard as misfeatures. If you're not so brave, rename it the TO DO
section ;-)
_The AUTHOR section_
...is nice to have in case there are gross errors in the documentation
or program behaviour (Bzzt!) and you want to mail a bug report.
_The SEE ALSO section_
...is a list of related man pages in alphabetical order.
Conventionally, it is the last section. You are free to invent other
sections if they really don't fit in one of those described so far. So
how exactly did you generate that man page? I expected that question,
here's the source, Luke:
.\" Process this file with
.\" groff -man -Tascii foo.1
.\"
.TH FOO 1 "MARCH 1995" Linux "User Manuals"
.SH NAME
foo \- frobnicate the bar library
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B foo [-bar] [-c
.I config-file
.B ]
.I file
.B ...
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B foo
frobnicates the bar library by tweaking internal
symbol tables. By default it parses all baz segments
and rearranges them in reverse order by time for the
.BR xyzzy (1)
linker to find them. The symdef entry is then compressed
using the WBG (Whiz-Bang-Gizmo) algorithm.
All files are processed in the order specified.
.SH OPTIONS
.IP -b
Do not write `busy' to stdout while processing.
.IP "-c config-file"
Use the alternate system wide
.I config-file
instead of
.IR /etc/foo.conf .
This overrides any
.B FOOCONF
environment variable.
.IP -a
In addition to the baz segments, also parse the
blurfl headers.
.IP -r
Recursive mode. Operates as fast as lightning
at the expense of a megabyte of virtual memory.
.SH FILES
.I /etc/foo.conf
.RS
The system wide configuration file. See
.BR foo (5)
for further details.
.RE
.I ~/.foorc
.RS
Per user configuration file. See
.BR foo (5)
for further details.
.SH ENVIRONMENT
.IP FOOCONF
If non-null the full pathname for an alternate system wide
.IR foo.conf .
Overridden by the
.B -c
option.
.SH DIAGNOSTICS
The following diagnostics may be issued on stderr:
Bad magic number.
.RS
The input file does not look like an archive file.
.RE
Old style baz segments.
.RS
.B foo
can only handle new style baz segments. COBOL
object libraries are not supported in this version.
.SH BUGS
The command name should have been chosen more carefully
to reflect its purpose.
.SH AUTHOR
Jens Schweikhardt <schweikh@noc.dfn.de>
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR bar (1),
.BR foo (5),
.BR xyzzy (1)
_3) How do I document several programs/functions in a single man page?_
Many programs (grep, egrep) and functions (printf, fprintf, ...) are
documented in a single man page. However, these man pages would be
quite useless if they were only accessible under one name. We can not
expect a user to remember that the egrep man page is actually the grep
man page. It is therefore necessary to have the man page available
under different names. You have several possibilities to achieve this:
1. have identical copies for each name.
2. connect all man pages using hard links.
3. symbolic links pointing to the actual man page.
4. use groff's `source' mechanism provided by the `.so' macro.
The first way is obviously a waste of disk space. The second is not
recommended because intelligent versions of the catman program can
save a lot of work by looking at the the file type or contents. Hard
links will prevent catman from being clever. (catman's purpose is to
format all man pages so that they can be displayed more quickly.) The
third alternative has a slight drawback: if flexibility is a concern,
you have to be aware that there are file systems that do not support
symbolic links. The upshot of this is that the Best Thing (TM) is
using groff's source mechanism. Here's how to do it: If you want to
have your man page available under the names `foo' and `bar' in
section 1, then put the man page in foo.1 and have bar.1 look like
this:
.so man1/foo.1
It is important to specify the `man1/' directory part as well as the
file name `foo.1' because when groff is run by the browser it will
have the manual base directory as its current working directory (cwd)
and groff interprets .so arguments relative to the cwd.
_4) Which macro package should I use? _
There are a number of macro packages especially designed for use in
writing man pages. Usually they are in the groff macro directory
/usr/lib/groff/tmac. The file names are tmac.<something>, where
<something> is the argument to groff's -m option. Groff will use
tmac.<something> when it is given the `-m <something>' option. Often
the blank between `-m' and `<something>' is omitted so we may say
`groff -man' when we are formatting man pages using the tmac.an macro
package. That's the reason for the strange name `tmac.an'. Besides
tmac.an there is another popular macro package, tmac.doc, which
originated at the University of California at Berkeley. Many BSD man
pages use it and it seems that UCB has made it its standard for
documentation. The tmac.doc macros are much more flexible but alas,
there are manual browsers that will not use them but always call groff
-man. For example, all xman programs I have seen will screw up on man
pages requiring tmac.doc. So do yourself a favor: use tmac.an -- use
of any other macro package is considered harmful. tmac.andoc is a
pseudo macro package that takes a look at the source and then loads
either tmac.an or tmac.doc. Actually any man page browser should use
it but until now not all of them do, so it is best we cling to ye olde
tmac.an. Anything I tell you from now on and concerning macros only
holds true for tmac.an. If you want to use the tmac.doc macros anyway,
here is a pointer to detailed information on how to use them:
http://www.bsdi.com/bsdi-man There is a searchable index form on the
page. Enter mdoc.samples and it will find you mdoc.samples(7), a
tutorial sampler for writing BSD man pages.
_5) What preprocessors may I use? _
Groff comes with at least three preprocessors, tbl, eqn, and pic (on
some systems they are named gtbl, geqn and gpic.) Their purpose is to
translate preprocessor macros and their data to regular troff input.
Tbl is a table preprocessor, eqn is an equations/maths preprocessor
and pic is a picture preprocessor. Please refer to the man pages for
more information on what functionality they provide. To put it in a
nutshell: don't write man pages requiring ANY preprocessor. Eqn will
generally produce terrible output for typewriter-like devices,
unfortunately the type of device 99% of all man pages are viewed on.
For example, XAllocColor.3x uses a few formulas with exponentiation.
Due to the nature of typewriter-like devices the exponent will be on
the same line as the base. N to the power of two appears as `N2'. Tbl
should be avoided because all xman programs I have seen fail on them.
Xman 3.1.6 uses the following command to format man pages, e.g.
signal(7):
gtbl /usr/man/man7/signal.7 | geqn | gtbl | groff -Tascii -man
/tmp/xmana01760 2> /dev/null
which screws up for sources using gtbl, because gtbl output is fed
again into gtbl. The effect is a man page without your table. I don't
know if it's a bug or a feature that gtbl chokes on its own output or
if xman could be a little smarter not using gtbl twice... Anyway, if
you want a table, format it yourself and put it between .nf .fi lines
so that it will be left unformatted. You won't have bold and italics
this way but this beats having your table swallowed any day. I have
yet to see a man page requiring pic preprocessing. But I would not
like it. As you can see above, xman will not use it and groff will
certainly do the funky wadakiki on the input.
_6) Should I distribute source and/or already formatted documentation?
_
Let me give the pros (+) and cons (-) of a few selected possibilities:
1. Source only:
+ smaller distribution package.
- inaccessible on systems without groff.
2. Uncompressed formatted only:
+ accessible even on systems without groff.
- the user can't generate a dvi or postscript file.
- waste of disk space on systems that also handle compressed
pages.
3. Compressed formatted only:
+ accessible even on systems without groff.
- the user can't generate a dvi or postscript file.
- which compression format would you use? .Z? .z? .gz? All of
them?
4. Source and uncompressed formatted:
+ accessible even on systems without groff.
- larger distribution package
- some systems may expect compressed formatted man pages.
- redundant information on systems equipped with groff.
IMHO it is best to distribute source only. The argument that it's
inaccessible on systems without groff does not matter. The 500+ man
pages of the Linux Documentation Project are source only. The man
pages of XFree86 are source only. The man pages from the FSF are
source only. In fact, I have rarely seen software distributed with
formatted man pages. If any sysadmin is really concerned about having
man pages accessible then he also has groff installed.
_7) What are the font conventions? _
First of all: don't use direct font operators like \fB \fP etc. Use
macros which take arguments. This way you avoid a common glitch:
forgetting the font change at the end of the word and having the bold
or italic extend up to the next font change. Believe me, it happens
more often than you think. The tmac.an macros provide the following
type faces:
.B Bold
.BI Bold alternating with italics
.BR Bold alternating with Roman
.I Italics
.IB Italics alternating with bold
.IR Italics alternating with Roman
.RB Roman alternating with bold
.RI Roman alternating with italics
.SM Small (scaled 9/10 of the regular size)
.SB Small bold (NOT small alternating with bold)
X alternating with Y means that the odd arguments are typeset in X
while the even arguments are typeset in Y. For example
.BI "Arg 1 is Bold, " "Arg 2 is Italics, " "and Bold, " "and
Italics."
The double quotes are needed to include white space into an argument.
So much for what's available. Here's how you should make use of the
different typefaces: (portions shamelessly stolen from man(7))
Although there are many arbitrary conventions for man pages in the
UNIX world, the existence of several hundred Linux-specific man pages
defines our standards: For functions, the arguments are always
specified using italics, even in the SYNOPSIS section, where the rest
of the function is specified in bold:
.BI "myfunction(int " argc ", char **" argv );
Filenames are always in italics, except in the SYNOPSIS section, where
included files are in bold. So you should use
.I /usr/include/stdio.h
and
.B #include <stdio.h>
Special macros, which are usually in upper case, are in bold:
.B MAXINT
When enumerating a list of error codes, the codes are in bold. This
list usually uses the .TP (paragraph with hanging tag) macro as
follows:
.TP
.B EBADF
.I fd is not a valid file descriptor.
.TP
.B EINVAL
.I fd is unsuitable for reading
Any reference to another man page (or to the subject of the current
man page) is in bold. If the manual section number is given, it is
given in roman, without any spaces:
.BR man (7)
Acronyms look best when typeset in small type face. So I recommend
.SM UNIX
.SM ASCII
.SM TAB
.SM NFS
.SM LALR(1)
_8) Polishing your man page_
Following are some guidelines that increase reliability, readability
and 'formatability' of your documentation.
* Test examples if they work (use cut and paste to give your shell
the exact wording from the man page) read output of your command
into your man page, don't type what you THINK your program will
print.
* Proof read, ispell, have someone else read it, especially if you
are not a native English speaker. The HOWTO you are reading by now
has not yet passed the latter test. Do you want to volunteer?
* Test your man page: Does groff complain when you format your man
page? It's nice to have the groff command line in a comment. Does
the man(1) command complain when you call `man yourprog'? Does the
way how man(1) uses the formatting system produce the expected
result? Will xman(1x) and tkman(1tk) cope with your manual?
XFree86 3.1 has xman 3.1.6 - X11R6, it will try to uncompress
using
gzip -c -d < %s > %s
zcat < %s > %s
* Will makewhatis(8) be able to extract the one-line description
from the NAME section?
_9) How do I get a plain text man page without all that ^H^_ stuff? _
Have a look at col(1), col can filter out backspace sequences. Just in
case you can't wait that long:
funnyprompt$ groff -t -e -mandoc -Tascii manpage.1 | col -bx >
manpage.txt
The -t and -e switches tell groff to preprocess using tbl and eqn.
This is overkill for man pages that don't require preprocessing but it
doesn't harm apart from a few CPU cycles wasted. On the other hand,
not using -t when it is actually required does harm: the table is
terribly formatted. You can even find out (well, "guess" is a better
word) what command is needed to format a certain groff document (not
just man pages) by issuing
funnyprompt$ grog /usr/man/man7/signal.7 groff -t -man
/usr/man/man7/signal.7
"Grog" stands for "GROff Guess", and it does what it says--guess, if
it were perfect we wouldn't need options any more. I've seen it guess
wrong on macro packages, but never on preprocessors. Here is a little
perl script I wrote that can delete the page headers and footers,
therefore saving you a few pages when printing long and elaborate man
pages. Save it in a file named strip-headers & chmod 755.
#!/usr/bin/perl -wn
# make it slurp the whole file at once:
undef $/;
# delete first header:
s/^\n*.*\n+//;
# delete last footer:
s/\n+.*\n+$/\n/g;
# delete page breaks:
s/\n\n+[^ \t].*\n\n+(\S+).*\1\n\n+/\n/g;
# collapse two or more blank lines into a single one:
s/\n{3,}/\n\n/g;
# see what's left...
print;
You have to use it as the first filter after the 'man' command as it
relies on the number of newlines being output by groff. For example:
funnyprompt$ man bash | strip-headers | col -bx > bash.txt
_10) How do I get a high quality PostScript man page? _
funnyprompt$ groff -t -e -mandoc -Tps manpage.1 > manpage.ps
Print that using your favorite PostScript printer/interpreter. See
question 9) for explanation of options.
_11) How do I get `apropos' and `whatis' to work? _
Suppose you wonder what compilers are installed on your system and how
these can be invoked. To answer this (frequently asked) question you
say
funnyprompt$ apropos compiler
f77 (1) - Fortran 77 compiler
gcc (1) - GNU C and C++ compiler
pc (1) - Pascal compiler
Apropos and whatis are used to give a quick response which man page
has information on a certain topic. Both programs search a number of
files named `whatis' that may be found in each of the manual base
directories. Like I said before, the whatis data base files contain a
one line entry for any man page in the respective directory tree. In
fact, that line is exactly the NAME section (to be precise: joined on
one line and with hyphenation removed, also note that the section is
mentioned within parentheses). The whatis data base files are created
with the makewhatis(8) program. There are several versions around, so
please refer to the man page what options are available. In order for
makewhatis to be able to extract the NAME sections correctly it is
important that you, the manual writer, adhere to the NAME section
format described under question 2). The difference between apropos and
whatis is where in the line and what they are looking for. Apropos
(which is equivalent to man -k) searches the argument string anywhere
on the line whereas whatis (equivalent to man -f) tries to match a
complete command name only on the part before the dash. Consequently,
`whatis cc' will report if there is a cc manual and remain quiet for
gcc.
Corrections and suggestions welcome!
_A) Copying conditions _
Copyright 1995,96,97 by Jens Schweikhardt <schweikh@noc.dfn.de>
Voice: ++49 7151 909516
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