If you ever feel useless, don’t forget that both
true
andfalse
have manpages in Linux.They even have
--help
and--version
flags in case you need them.Huh, TIL
~ $ /bin/true --help Usage: /bin/true [ignored command line arguments] or: /bin/true OPTION Exit with a status code indicating success. --help display this help and exit --version output version information and exit NOTE: your shell may have its own version of true, which usually supersedes the version described here. Please refer to your shell's documentation for details about the options it supports. GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/> Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/true> or available locally via: info '(coreutils) true invocation'
I honestly don’t know what I prefer more, the overengineered GNU
true
, or thetrue
that shipped with some older system that was literally just an empty file with the executable bit set.
not to be consufes with:
true: Do nothing, successfully
And also not to be confused with:
:
: Do nothingI only learned that this was a thing like literally two days ago!
ADHD be llike:
This version of ‘false’ is implemented as a C program, and is thus more secure and faster than a shell script implementation
I bet there is a way to exploit
int main(int, char**) { return 1; }
If you run it on a machine with 0-bit integers, it will cause an overflow
Just tried “false && echo wee” in my terminal, then “true && echo wee”. Learn something new every day.
A low level floppy dick, that’s me!
For anyone curious, that comes from
My Forte:
apropos man man