Re: /bin/true (was [TUHS] basic tools / Universal Unix)

Mr. Ron Natalie, "Ron Natalie" <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> 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. i am actively chewing on this. These things can be found by the exec family of C functions, as Chet Ramey points out from time to time (but i think on other lists). That even makes things which make no sense but as a shell builtin a little bit understandable... maybe.. I for one am ever so fascinated of Unix! I cannot remember what i thought once entering the Unix world, i remember i first did not understand why and that [ etc. do exist. |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. Yes. But then nonetheless quite the opposite, it was very strange looking at Plan9 source code which does not have such a file header, after living in the world of BSD and GNU source code for one and a half decade. Different to your experience, for me the lawyers were there first. --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt)