NAME

true, false — do nothing

SYNOPSIS

OPTIONS

Ignored.

EXIT STATUS

true:

0 (success)

false:

1

SEE ALSO

The : sh(1) built-in, equivalent to true.

STANDARDS

Conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2024 (“POSIX.1”), though the standard allows false to exit with any value [1, 125].

HISTORY

Appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX as

AT&T System III UNIX false exits 255. Later releases retain these implementations, with increasing amounts of licensing and licence comments; AT&T System V Release 4 UNIX adds /sbin/sh shebangs.

X/Open Portability Guide Issue 2 (“XPG2”) standardises true as exiting "zero" and false — "non-zero".

IEEE Std 1003.1-2024 (“POSIX.1”) narrows false to the present-day [1, 125].