19 Oct
2017
19 Oct
'17
11:43 p.m.
On Thu, 19 Oct 2017, Ron Natalie wrote:
My favorite reduction to absurdity was /bin/true.
Someone decided we
needed shell commands for true and false. Easy enough to add a script
that said "exit 0" or exit 1" as its only line. Then someone realized
that the "exit 0" in /bin true was superfluous, the default return was
0. /bin/true turned into an empty, yet executable, file.
Then the lawyers got involved. We got a version of a packaged UNIX (I
think it was Interactive Systems). Every shell script got twelve lines
of copyright/license boilerplate. Including /bin true. The file had
nothing but useless comment in it.
I've also seen /bin/true and /bin/false (I've often been tempted to write
"/bin/maybe" to introduce a little non-determinism) as *separate binaries*
i.e. not even linked.
These days they appear to be built-ins (as I would expect).
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will
suffer."