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

Pete Wright pete at nomadlogic.org
Fri Oct 20 01:01:46 AEST 2017



On 10/19/2017 07:52, 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.

heh yea it certainly seems pretty funny, but i will say it did present a 
neat opportunity for the NYC BSD user-group back in 2015:
http://www.nycbug.org/index.cgi?action=view&id=10635

it was pretty funny to see how many different implementations one could 
dream up for such a simple program, and it seemed to speak to how each 
project approaches complexity.

-pete

-- 
Pete Wright
pete at nomadlogic.org
@nomadlogicLA




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