Re: Info vs. man of true

[Jim Meyering]

Orna Agmon <address@hidden> wrote:
> On my system, (RH 7.3), I have a man page for true which directs me to the
> updated info page. On the other hand, the info page claims that true does
> not respond to --help and to --version, but it does (as the man page
> claims).

Thanks for the report.
That is fixed in the latest release:

  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-5.0.tar.bz2
  (coreutils is the union of fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils)

The info node for true now tells the truth :-)

    `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.