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true
: Do nothing, successfully
true
does nothing except return an exit status of 0, meaning
success. It can be used as a place holder in shell scripts
where a successful command is needed, although the shell built-in
command :
(colon) may do the same thing faster.
In most modern shells, true
is a built-in command, so when
you use `true' in a script, you're probably using the built-in
command, not the one documented here.
By default, true
honors the `--help' and `--version'
options. However, that is contrary to POSIX, so when the environment
variable POSIXLY_CORRECT
is set, true
ignores all
command line arguments, including `--help' and `--version'.
This version of true
is implemented as a C program, and is thus
more secure and faster than a shell script implementation, and may safely
be used as a dummy shell for the purpose of disabling accounts.