https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=Irino&feedformat=atomexplain xkcd - User contributions [en]2024-03-28T15:42:52ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216601692: Man Page2016-06-10T07:18:55Z<p>Irino: Added link to wikpedia:ANSEL</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|As one of those comics, needs an explanation for each part. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.<br />
<br />
[[wikipedia:Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options]], also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.<br />
<br />
<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code><br />
<br />
This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||This sounds like a command for a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes (longer, with the same length as the letter "m") can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but with a strange twist. Usually it would be "debug.txt" or something similar, allowing one to run the program and debug its output later. However, this outputs to an executable, which is unusual.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options usually get removed.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but it is possible it is telling the user to use Google to find out what this tag does.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem. [Wikipedia link, short explanation of why needed]<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||See above.<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard program flag, usually meaning that the program will overwrite a file rather than make a new one when data is output.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag, possibly means that all other flags (or maybe even including this one!) have the opposite effects - if so, a lot of strange things would happen. (Especially with -b, -e, -f, -jk, -O...)<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option. <br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program. "STDOUT" is short for "standard output".<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a, in that it sounds more like an option for some kind of robot.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[[wikipedia:ANSEL|ANSEL]] is an old and obscure character encoding that predates ASCII. Using ANSEL as a default would be strange and largely incompatible with most modern systems. On the other hand, UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q, blerp does something non-standard by default.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q - instead of silencing output, it makes it more specific, usually to help with debugging. Instead, this flag gets replaced with a command that prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage. inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera does work and points to the same page as http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.<br />
<br />
blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to 501(c)(3) which is an organization that is tax-exempt.<br />
<br />
[Copyright is a mishmash, "or best offer" is humourous, needs better explanation of individual parts.]<br />
<br />
The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.<br />
<br />
"OR BEST OFFER" is a reference to an auction where the person who bids the highest gets to buy the item. In context, it suggest the person who has the highest offer for blerp will be sold the rights to the program. Since the other licenses mentioned would allow for free usage without paying royalties, it would usually be pointless to buy the rights to the program.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216591692: Man Page2016-06-10T07:17:09Z<p>Irino: small additions</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|As one of those comics, needs an explanation for each part. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.<br />
<br />
[[wikipedia:Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options]], also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.<br />
<br />
<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code><br />
<br />
This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||This sounds like a command for a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes (longer, with the same length as the letter "m") can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but with a strange twist. Usually it would be "debug.txt" or something similar, allowing one to run the program and debug its output later. However, this outputs to an executable, which is unusual.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options usually get removed.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but it is possible it is telling the user to use Google to find out what this tag does.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem. [Wikipedia link, short explanation of why needed]<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||See above.<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard program flag, usually meaning that the program will overwrite a file rather than make a new one when data is output.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag, possibly means that all other flags (or maybe even including this one!) have the opposite effects - if so, a lot of strange things would happen. (Especially with -b, -e, -f, -jk, -O...)<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option. <br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program. "STDOUT" is short for "standard output".<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a, in that it sounds more like an option for some kind of robot.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.]ANSEL is an old and obscure character encoding that predates ASCII. Using ANSEL as a default would be strange and largely incompatible with most modern systems. On the other hand, UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q, blerp does something non-standard by default.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q - instead of silencing output, it makes it more specific, usually to help with debugging. Instead, this flag gets replaced with a command that prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage. inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera does work and points to the same page as http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.<br />
<br />
blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to 501(c)(3) which is an organization that is tax-exempt.<br />
<br />
[Copyright is a mishmash, "or best offer" is humourous, needs better explanation of individual parts.]<br />
<br />
The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.<br />
<br />
"OR BEST OFFER" is a reference to an auction where the person who bids the highest gets to buy the item. In context, it suggest the person who has the highest offer for blerp will be sold the rights to the program. Since the other licenses mentioned would allow for free usage without paying royalties, it would usually be pointless to buy the rights to the program.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216551692: Man Page2016-06-10T07:06:17Z<p>Irino: forgot a bracket</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.<br />
<br />
[[wikipedia:Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options]], also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.<br />
<br />
<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code><br />
<br />
This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||DEBUG.EXE is the old 16-bit debugger that came with MS-DOS. On a Unix system it is much more likely that one would use the GNU debugger (GDB). Also I beleive any debugger would object to having random program output piped to it, this is not how debuggers are meant to be used.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options gets removed.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option. <br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links] Many commands offer an option to follow filesystem links, this option however seems to suggest that it will only politely pretend to do so.<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[[wikipedia:ANSEL|ANSEL]] is an old and obscure character encoding that predates ASCII. Using ANSEL as a default seems rather crazy. UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Jikes is a Java bytecode compiler originally developed by IBM. Will try to use anothere compiler and likely fail to find one.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera, is a currently active webpage and inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera does work and points to the same page as http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera|Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs. [The 47744-Hemiptera link seems to point to the "Stink Bugs Family" in the Recent Observations section]<br />
<br />
blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to the [https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exemption-requirements-section-501-c-3-organizations 501(c)(3)] section of the Internal Revenue Code of the United States, which describes the requirements for an organization to be tax-exempt.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. <br />
<br />
"LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.<br />
<br />
"OR BEST OFFER" is a reference to an auction where the person who bids the highest gets to buy the item. In context, it suggest the person who has the highest offer for blerp will be sold the rights to the program. Since the other licenses mentioned would allow for free usage without paying royalties, it would usually be pointless to buy the rights to the program.<br />
<br />
The title text reads like a normal man page at first, then cuts off and tells the user to just Google it. This references the common usage of Google to find information about programs and program options instead of reading the man page, since the internet often has clearer and more useful information presented in a more user-friendly manner.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216541692: Man Page2016-06-10T07:05:49Z<p>Irino: added wikipedia link to ANSEL</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.<br />
<br />
[[wikipedia:Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options]], also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.<br />
<br />
<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code><br />
<br />
This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||DEBUG.EXE is the old 16-bit debugger that came with MS-DOS. On a Unix system it is much more likely that one would use the GNU debugger (GDB). Also I beleive any debugger would object to having random program output piped to it, this is not how debuggers are meant to be used.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options gets removed.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option. <br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links] Many commands offer an option to follow filesystem links, this option however seems to suggest that it will only politely pretend to do so.<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[[wikipedia:ANSEL|] is an old and obscure character encoding that predates ASCII. Using ANSEL as a default seems rather crazy. UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Jikes is a Java bytecode compiler originally developed by IBM. Will try to use anothere compiler and likely fail to find one.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera, is a currently active webpage and inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera does work and points to the same page as http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera|Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs. [The 47744-Hemiptera link seems to point to the "Stink Bugs Family" in the Recent Observations section]<br />
<br />
blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to the [https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exemption-requirements-section-501-c-3-organizations 501(c)(3)] section of the Internal Revenue Code of the United States, which describes the requirements for an organization to be tax-exempt.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. <br />
<br />
"LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.<br />
<br />
"OR BEST OFFER" is a reference to an auction where the person who bids the highest gets to buy the item. In context, it suggest the person who has the highest offer for blerp will be sold the rights to the program. Since the other licenses mentioned would allow for free usage without paying royalties, it would usually be pointless to buy the rights to the program.<br />
<br />
The title text reads like a normal man page at first, then cuts off and tells the user to just Google it. This references the common usage of Google to find information about programs and program options instead of reading the man page, since the internet often has clearer and more useful information presented in a more user-friendly manner.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216531692: Man Page2016-06-10T07:03:11Z<p>Irino: Title text explained</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.<br />
<br />
[[wikipedia:Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options]], also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.<br />
<br />
<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code><br />
<br />
This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||DEBUG.EXE is the old 16-bit debugger that came with MS-DOS. On a Unix system it is much more likely that one would use the GNU debugger (GDB). Also I beleive any debugger would object to having random program output piped to it, this is not how debuggers are meant to be used.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options gets removed.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option. <br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links] Many commands offer an option to follow filesystem links, this option however seems to suggest that it will only politely pretend to do so.<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||ANSEL is an old and obscure character encoding that predates ASCII. Using ANSEL as a default seems rather crazy. UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Jikes is a Java bytecode compiler originally developed by IBM. Will try to use anothere compiler and likely fail to find one.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera, is a currently active webpage and inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera does work and points to the same page as http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera|Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs. [The 47744-Hemiptera link seems to point to the "Stink Bugs Family" in the Recent Observations section]<br />
<br />
blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to the [https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exemption-requirements-section-501-c-3-organizations 501(c)(3)] section of the Internal Revenue Code of the United States, which describes the requirements for an organization to be tax-exempt.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. <br />
<br />
"LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.<br />
<br />
"OR BEST OFFER" is a reference to an auction where the person who bids the highest gets to buy the item. In context, it suggest the person who has the highest offer for blerp will be sold the rights to the program. Since the other licenses mentioned would allow for free usage without paying royalties, it would usually be pointless to buy the rights to the program.<br />
<br />
The title text reads like a normal man page at first, then cuts off and tells the user to just Google it. This references the common usage of Google to find information about programs and program options instead of reading the man page, since the internet often has clearer and more useful information presented in a more user-friendly manner.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216491692: Man Page2016-06-10T06:54:00Z<p>Irino: Added part about "or best offer"</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.<br />
<br />
[[wikipedia:Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options]], also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.<br />
<br />
<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code><br />
<br />
This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||DEBUG.EXE is the old 16-bit debugger that came with MS-DOS. On a Unix system it is much more likely that one would use the GNU debugger (GDB). Also I beleive any debugger would object to having random program output piped to it, this is not how debuggers are meant to be used.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options gets removed.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option. <br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Jikes is a Java bytecode compiler originally developed by IBM. Will try to use anothere compiler and likely fail to find one.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera, is a currently active webpage and inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera does work and points to the same page as http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera|Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs. [The 47744-Hemiptera link seems to point to the "Stink Bugs Family" in the Recent Observations section]<br />
<br />
blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to the [https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exemption-requirements-section-501-c-3-organizations 501(c)(3)] section of the Internal Revenue Code of the United States, which describes the requirements for an organization to be tax-exempt.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. <br />
<br />
"LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.<br />
<br />
"OR BEST OFFER" is a reference to an auction where the person who bids the highest gets to buy the item. In context, it suggest the person who has the highest offer for blerp will be sold the rights to the program. Since the other licenses mentioned would allow for free usage without paying royalties, it would usually be pointless to buy the rights to the program.<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216421692: Man Page2016-06-10T06:47:31Z<p>Irino: Little more on the 501(c)(3) part</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.<br />
<br />
[[wikipedia:Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options]], also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.<br />
<br />
<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code><br />
<br />
This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options gets removed.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option. <br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera|Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.<br />
<br />
blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to the [https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exemption-requirements-section-501-c-3-organizations 501(c)(3)] section of the Internal Revenue Code of the United States, which describes the requirements for an organization to be tax-exempt.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216411692: Man Page2016-06-10T06:43:34Z<p>Irino: Fixed the link to Hemiptera wikipedia</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.<br />
<br />
[[wikipedia:Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options]], also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.<br />
<br />
<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code><br />
<br />
This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options gets removed.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option. <br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera|Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.<br />
<br />
blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to 501(c)(3) which is an organization that is tax-exempt.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216391692: Man Page2016-06-10T06:39:27Z<p>Irino: slashes before "s</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.<br />
<br />
[[wikipedia:Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options]], also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.<br />
<br />
<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code><br />
<br />
This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options gets removed.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option. <br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.<br />
<br />
blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to 501(c)(3) which is an organization that is tax-exempt.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216381692: Man Page2016-06-10T06:37:55Z<p>Irino: Added piece about flags and deleted the piece about the short list</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.<br />
<br />
[[wikipedia:Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options]], also known as flags, are typed following a program name to change how the program runs. The following is an example usage.<br />
<br />
<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code><br />
<br />
This would run blerp in attack mode, outputting to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and with POPE set to AVIGNON. In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and applicable flags can be followed by arguments (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options gets removed.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option. <br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.<br />
<br />
blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to 501(c)(3) which is an organization that is tax-exempt.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216361692: Man Page2016-06-10T06:17:33Z<p>Irino: -V explanation</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.<br />
<br />
[Here is a short list of some thoughts on or explanations of the options.]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option. <br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view the version number. This flag changes the version number instead.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.<br />
<br />
blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to 501(c)(3) which is an organization that is tax-exempt.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216351692: Man Page2016-06-10T06:15:34Z<p>Irino: typo in -U</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.<br />
<br />
[Here is a short list of some thoughts on or explanations of the options.]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option. <br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.<br />
<br />
blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to 501(c)(3) which is an organization that is tax-exempt.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216341692: Man Page2016-06-10T06:14:48Z<p>Irino: -t explanation</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.<br />
<br />
[Here is a short list of some thoughts on or explanations of the options.]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag itself would be invalid.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option. <br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these].<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggest posting a status update to Facebook.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.<br />
<br />
blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid chapter reference for a manpage, it is however a slightly covert reference to 501(c)(3) which is an organization that is tax-exempt.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216311692: Man Page2016-06-10T06:07:27Z<p>Irino: -U explanation</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.<br />
<br />
[Here is a short list of some thoughts on or explanations of the options.]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||This refers to a [https://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Schism historical schism in the Catholic Church.] In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avingon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move and the Pople who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. There is actually a possible feature request here, as \"PISA\", a third Pope, should also be an option. <br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||A laundry option.<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggest posting a status update to Facebook.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
The "copyright" line references several variously open-source content licenses; GPL 2, GPL 3, creative commons, and BSD licenses are mentioned. "LIKE GECKO" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a lot of text designed to let the browser pretend to be several different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were Gecko while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a user-agent string.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216271692: Man Page2016-06-10T05:43:51Z<p>Irino: -i and -I</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a Unix man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
Unix manpages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not verbose and well-written explanations as you may find in manuals which is another common type of documentation. This fictional manpage seems to exaggerate its crypticness, thus making fun of a common trait that many manpages have.<br />
<br />
[Here is a short list of some thoughts on or explanations of the options.]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with -I.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||A reference to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avignon_Papacy Avignon Papacy], where 7 successive Catholic Popes resided in the French city of Avignon rather than Rome.<br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||A laundry option.<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Almost standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216231692: Man Page2016-06-10T05:33:50Z<p>Irino: Added category:Programming</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a GNU man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
[Here is a short list of some thoughts on or explanations of the options.]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. Command line options (flags) typically use en dashes (short dashes approximately the same width as the letter n). Em dashes can't easily be typed into a command line interface, so switching flags from en to em dashes is excessively difficult and nonsensical.<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||and -I Somewhat weird.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||Controlling reality. [Explanation regarding Popes needed? This one confuses me.]<br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||A laundry option.<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Almost standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216201692: Man Page2016-06-10T05:30:12Z<p>Irino: -q explanation</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a GNU man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
[Here is a short list of some thoughts on or explanations of the options.]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. [Needs a short explanation for dashes.]<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||and -I Somewhat weird.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||Controlling reality. [Explanation regarding Popes needed? This one confuses me.]<br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||A laundry option.<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Almost standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216191692: Man Page2016-06-10T05:24:51Z<p>Irino: The bug report site explanation</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a GNU man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
[Here is a short list of some thoughts on or explanations of the options.]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. [Needs a short explanation for dashes.]<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||and -I Somewhat weird.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||Controlling reality. [Explanation regarding Popes needed? This one confuses me.]<br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||Almost standard flag, but with a twist of implying that non-quiet mode is spoken.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||A laundry option.<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Almost standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
The bug report site, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera, isn't a currently active webpage, but inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera does work. [[wikipedia:Hemiptera]] is the order classifying True Bugs.<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:{| class="wikitable"<br />
|style="background-color:black;"|<font color="white"><br />
;NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
<br />
;SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}<br />
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}<br />
<br />
;DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
<br />
;OPTIONS<br />
:{|<br />
! scope="row" | -a<br />
| ATTACK MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -b<br />
| SUPPRESS BEES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -—<br />
| FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -c<br />
| COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -d<br />
| PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -D<br />
| DEPRECATED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -e<br />
| EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -f<br />
| FUN MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -g<br />
| USE GOOGLE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -h<br />
| CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -i<br />
| IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -I<br />
| IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -jk<br />
| KIDDING<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -n<br />
| BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -o<br />
| OVERWRITE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -O<br />
| OPPOSITE DAY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -p<br />
| SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -q<br />
| QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -r<br />
| RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -R<br />
| RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki><br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -s<br />
| FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -S<br />
| STEALTH MODE<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -t<br />
| TUMBLE DRY<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -u<br />
| UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -U<br />
| UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -v<br />
| VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -V<br />
| SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
|-<br />
! scope="row" | -y<br />
| YIKES<br />
|}<br />
<br />
;SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
<br />
;BUG REPORTS<br />
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki><br />
<br />
;COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
</font><br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216171692: Man Page2016-06-10T05:19:05Z<p>Irino: -R explanation</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a GNU man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
[Here is a short list of some thoughts on or explanations of the options.]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. [Needs a short explanation for dashes.]<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||and -I Somewhat weird.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||Controlling reality. [Explanation regarding Popes needed? This one confuses me.]<br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||Almost standard flag, but with a twist of implying that non-quiet mode is spoken.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "http://*" suggests that blerp will be run on every webpage on the internet.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||A laundry option.<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Almost standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
Bug reports leads to a taxonomy site?<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
:SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS]…[ ARGS … -F [FLAGS]…}<br />
:blerp {… DIRECTORY … URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] - {}<br />
:DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND<br />
:ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
:OPTIONS<br />
:-a ATTACK MODE<br />
:-b SUPPRESS BEES<br />
:-— FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
:-c COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
:-d PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
:-D DEPRECATED<br />
:-e EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
:-f FUN MODE<br />
:-g USE GOOGLE<br />
:-h CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
:-i IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
:-I IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
:-jk KIDDING<br />
:-n BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
:-o OVERWRITE<br />
:-O OPPOSITE DAY<br />
:-p SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"<br />
:-q QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF<br />
:BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
:-r RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
:-R RUN RECURSIVELY ON http://*<br />
:-s FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
:-S STEALTH MODE<br />
:-t TUMBLE DRY<br />
:-u UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
:-U UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
:-v VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
:-V SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
:-y YIKES<br />
<br />
:SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51), blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
:BUG REPORTS<br />
:http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera<br />
:COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216161692: Man Page2016-06-10T05:14:14Z<p>Irino: Finished table format and fixed "-l" to "-I" in transcript.</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a GNU man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
[Here is a short list of some thoughts on or explanations of the options.]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. [Needs a short explanation for dashes.]<br />
|-<br />
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful.<br />
|-<br />
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.<br />
|-<br />
| -D||DEPRECATED||Useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague.<br />
|-<br />
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
|-<br />
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
|-<br />
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
|-<br />
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||and -I Somewhat weird.<br />
|-<br />
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||<br />
|-<br />
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
|-<br />
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"||Controlling reality. [Explanation regarding Popes needed? This one confuses me.]<br />
|-<br />
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||Almost standard flag, but with a twist of implying that non-quiet mode is spoken.<br />
|-<br />
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
|-<br />
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||Could be harmful, may not halt depending on what blerp does.<br />
|-<br />
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||[Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
|-<br />
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a.<br />
|-<br />
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||A laundry option.<br />
|-<br />
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||[Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
|-<br />
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Almost standard flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
|-<br />
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Strange flag.<br />
|-<br />
| -y||YIKES||Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
Bug reports leads to a taxonomy site?<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
:SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS]…[ ARGS … -F [FLAGS]…}<br />
:blerp {… DIRECTORY … URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] - {}<br />
:DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND<br />
:ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
:OPTIONS<br />
:-a ATTACK MODE<br />
:-b SUPPRESS BEES<br />
:-— FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
:-c COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
:-d PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
:-D DEPRECATED<br />
:-e EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
:-f FUN MODE<br />
:-g USE GOOGLE<br />
:-h CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
:-i IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
:-I IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
:-jk KIDDING<br />
:-n BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
:-o OVERWRITE<br />
:-O OPPOSITE DAY<br />
:-p SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"<br />
:-q QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF<br />
:BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
:-r RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
:-R RUN RECURSIVELY ON http://*<br />
:-s FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
:-S STEALTH MODE<br />
:-t TUMBLE DRY<br />
:-u UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
:-U UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
:-v VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
:-V SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
:-y YIKES<br />
<br />
:SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51), blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
:BUG REPORTS<br />
:http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera<br />
:COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1692:_Man_Page&diff=1216141692: Man Page2016-06-10T04:59:08Z<p>Irino: Start of a table for the explanation (should be easier to read, I will finish)</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1692<br />
| date = June 10, 2016<br />
| title = Man Page<br />
| image = man_page.png<br />
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft/outline. As one of those comics, needs a section on each part. Needs an explanation of a man page for those unaware. Also needs fact-checking.}}<br />
This comic shows a GNU man page for a fictional program called "blerp". It details the command line options for this program, many of which are strange, annoying, or even impossible. These options are mostly in alphabetical order.<br />
<br />
[Here is a short list of some thoughts on or explanations of the options.]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation<br />
|-<br />
| -a||ATTACK MODE||Like a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program.<br />
|-<br />
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option.<br />
|-<br />
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Hard to tell the difference between en and em dashes. [Needs a short explanation for dashes.]<br />
|-<br />
| -c Most likely not useful.<br />
<br />
-d Almost a standard option, but .exe is the weird part.<br />
<br />
-D Useless.<br />
<br />
-e Vague.<br />
<br />
-f Strange and slightly ominous.<br />
<br />
-g As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but most likely relating to googling how this program works.<br />
<br />
-h Completely impossible, by the Halting Theorem.<br />
<br />
-i and -I Somewhat weird.<br />
<br />
-jk A common acronym, not a program flag.<br />
<br />
-n Possibly mathematically ominous? Otherwise useless.<br />
<br />
-o Standard flag.<br />
<br />
-O Strange flag.<br />
<br />
-p Controlling reality. [Explanation regarding Popes needed? This one confuses me.]<br />
<br />
-q Almost standard flag, but with a twist of implying that non-quiet mode is spoken.<br />
<br />
-r Pointless and possibly damaging.<br />
<br />
-R Could be harmful, may not halt depending on what blerp does.<br />
<br />
-s [Needs explanation of symbolic links]<br />
<br />
-S Similar to -a.<br />
<br />
-t A laundry option.<br />
<br />
-u [Explanation of ANSEL necessary.] UTF-8 is rather standard. Similar in this regard to -q.<br />
<br />
-U Almost standard flag.<br />
<br />
-v Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q. This command prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). Note that the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .<br />
<br />
-V Strange flag.<br />
<br />
-y Meaningless.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
Bug reports leads to a taxonomy site?<br />
<br />
Copyright "or best offer" is humourous, needs explanation of individual parts.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]<br />
:NAME<br />
:blerp<br />
:SYNOPSIS<br />
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS]…[ ARGS … -F [FLAGS]…}<br />
:blerp {… DIRECTORY … URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] - {}<br />
:DESCRIPTION<br />
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND<br />
:ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.<br />
:OPTIONS<br />
:-a ATTACK MODE<br />
:-b SUPPRESS BEES<br />
:-— FLAGS USE EM DASHES<br />
:-c COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS<br />
:-d PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE<br />
:-D DEPRECATED<br />
:-e EXECUTE SOMETHING<br />
:-f FUN MODE<br />
:-g USE GOOGLE<br />
:-h CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS<br />
:-i IGNORE CASE (LOWER)<br />
:-l IGNORE CASE (UPPER)<br />
:-jk KIDDING<br />
:-n BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED<br />
:-o OVERWRITE<br />
:-O OPPOSITE DAY<br />
:-p SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS \"ROME\" OR \"AVIGNON\"<br />
:-q QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF<br />
:BEING SPOKEN ALOUD<br />
:-r RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS<br />
:-R RUN RECURSIVELY ON http://*<br />
:-s FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY<br />
:-S STEALTH MODE<br />
:-t TUMBLE DRY<br />
:-u UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL<br />
:-U UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)<br />
:-v VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}<br />
:-V SET VERSION NUMBER<br />
:-y YIKES<br />
<br />
:SEE ALSO<br />
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51), blorp(501)(c)(3)<br />
:BUG REPORTS<br />
:http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/46644-Hemiptera<br />
:COPYRIGHT<br />
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1449:_Red_Rover&diff=795051449: Red Rover2014-11-19T20:14:09Z<p>Irino: /* Explanation */ because it says 'nouns.'</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1449<br />
| date = November 19, 2014<br />
| title = Red Rover<br />
| image = red_rover.png<br />
| titletext = I just learned about the Slide Mountain Ocean, which I like because it's three nouns that sound like they can't possibly all refer to the same thing.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
This comic shows what the landmasses of {{w|Pangaea}} were hypothesized to have looked like during the Triassic Period (roughly 200 million years ago) before continental drift, the process by which landmasses moving over the Earth's mantle collide and separate, brought them into the configuration we see today. It also shows the landmass {{w|Laurasia}} declaring, "Red rover, red rover, send India over!" as if the continents were playing the game {{w|Red Rover}}. <br />
<br />
In the game of Red Rover, the aim is for an individual to charge into the opposing team who are holding hands, and attempt to cause a break in the human chain. If the individual succeeds, they take one of the opposing teams members back to their own team. If the chain doesn't break, the individual joins that team. In the game portrayed, an isolated landmass (India in contemporary geography), is the individual charging towards the Laurasian landmass, attempting to break through. We know of course that India failed in this attempt, and as per the games rules joined the Asian 'team'.<br />
<br />
It is accepted that the Himalayas, the highest elevated mountain range on earth, formed by the collision of India into what is now Asia. For various reasons, the movement of the Indian plate from its location in Gondwana 90 million years ago to its impact point with the rest of Asia 50 million years ago was extremely rapid (as plate movements go) at about 20 cm per year. Needless to say, the idea that the landmasses on Earth are sentient and moving about in an incredibly slow game of Red Rover, with India's rapid movement being a result of being "called over", is not one which is scientifically accepted.<br />
<br />
The title text refers to the {{w|Slide Mountain Ocean}}, which was located between the Intermontane Islands and North America in the Triassic time beginning around 245 million years ago. The reason for the unusual name which interests [[Randall]] is that the Slide Mountain {{w|Terrane}} was on the floor of the ancient ocean. The name interests Randall because oceans and mountains are mutually exclusive concepts (mountains are land masses where oceans are bodies of water) and neither mountains nor oceans relate in any direct way to slides.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
[Two depictions of Earth at different points in continental formation, one above the other]<br />
<br />
[The top depiction shows a relatively earlier time period, "shortly" after the separation of Pangaea into Laurasia (northern supercontinent) and Gondwana (southern supercontinent), with the two supercontinents labeled]<br />
<br />
Laurasia: Red Rover, Red Rover, send India over!<br />
<br />
[The bottom depiction; the land mass that would become India is shown moving, with motion lines, toward the northern supercontinent]<br />
<br />
How the Himalayas formed<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Geography]]</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=File:%3F%3F%3F38.png&diff=78807File:???38.png2014-11-12T08:14:42Z<p>Irino: </p>
<hr />
<div>== Licensing ==<br />
{{XKCD file}}</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1416:_Pixels&diff=74749Talk:1416: Pixels2014-09-03T07:15:46Z<p>Irino: </p>
<hr />
<div>Firefox users with HTTPS Everywhere may have trouble seeing the comic, and Chrome users may experience lag (for lack of a better word) when zooming in. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.168|141.101.99.168]] 06:11, 3 September 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The combination of "turtle" and "pixel" reminded me of how to code graphics in the older days with for instance turbo pascal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_graphics) - Stian<br />
<br />
Would it be possible to have a "gallery" of all the zoom-in images? [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.209|199.27.128.209]] 06:29, 3 September 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Since the Zoom-in images have at lest one story line in them (I read one about a book launch, the book was launched to space in a rocket), I think a gallery or some such is needed for them. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.218|108.162.250.218]] 06:50, 3 September 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I got to a white panel and there was nothing. Everything was white and zooming in or out didn't change it. Not sure if it was a bug or intended. -- [[User:Irino|Irino]] ([[User talk:Irino|talk]]) 07:15, 3 September 2014 (UTC)</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1408:_March_of_the_Penguins&diff=737081408: March of the Penguins2014-08-15T05:07:28Z<p>Irino: Emperor Penguin facts</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1408<br />
| date = August 15, 2014<br />
| title = March of the Penguins<br />
| image = march_of_the_penguins.png<br />
| titletext = You ARE getting older, though.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Very basic explanation. Could use some fleshing out.}}<br />
<br />
Many of the xkcd comics outline ways to make people feel older by referencing various pieces of popular culture that are outdated or feel like they happened a long time ago (for instance, [[1393: Timeghost]]). This seems to be what Black Hat is doing as he walks in on Megan to announce that all the penguins from {{w|March of the Penguins}} (a 2005 documentary about emperor penguins) are dead. Megan is familiar with these sorts of antics, and so, frustrated, she simply acknowledges Black Hat's statement by agreeing that everyone is aging. Black Hat, however, reveals that he is not trying to make her feel old, he is announcing that he has killed the penguins, and is "trying to apologize". This obviously gives the situation a much darker tone, especially since Black Hat is likely not truly apologizing, as he is very unapologetic in his [[72: Classhole|"classhole"]] tendencies.<br />
<br />
{{w|Emperor penguins}} actually live about 20 years on average, so barring any intervention by Black Hat, most of the younger penguins and much of the older penguins in the movie are still alive as of this comic.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript}}<br />
:[Black Hat walks in, Megan is at a desk]<br />
:Black Hat: All the birds from ''March of the Penguins'' are now dead.<br />
<br />
:Megan: OK, I ''get'' it. We're all aging.<br />
<br />
:Black Hat: What? No. I'm not trying to make you feel old. They were alive last night. I'm trying to apologize.<br />
<br />
:Megan: Oh God<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}</div>Irinohttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1377:_Fish&diff=68798Talk:1377: Fish2014-06-04T06:57:14Z<p>Irino: Created page with "I took it to mean that we are the camouflaged fish and the extraterrestrials are the shark. We have been naturally selected to be hard to find through some means, probably by ..."</p>
<hr />
<div>I took it to mean that we are the camouflaged fish and the extraterrestrials are the shark. We have been naturally selected to be hard to find through some means, probably by distance from a predator life form or just being tiny, and have thus not encountered any of them. -- [[User:Irino|Irino]] ([[User talk:Irino|talk]]) 06:57, 4 June 2014 (UTC)</div>Irino