[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Proulx) wrote: > Paul Jarc wrote: >> false --help exits 0. false --version exits 1. I think false --help >> should be changed, but certainly one of them should be. > > Hmm... I think all commands with --version should exit 0 for > consistency.
I think false should exit nonzero regardless of its arguments, for consistency. > However bash's shell built-in false has the same exit 1 behavior. Yes, for both --help and --version. I just checked the external false command on Solaris, NetBSD, and FreeBSD, and the built-in in pdksh; they don't recognize --help and --version, so they exit nonzero. coreutils' false is definitely in the minority. > Is there really a reason to stir up this nest of hornets? The case where it makes a difference is when a program dynamically constructs a command line: at one point, it sets the command name to "false", expecting that will make the command exit nonzero; at another point, it sets the first argument to "--help", possibly expecting that will make the command a successful no-op. This is probably extremely uncommon, but uniformity can't hurt. > Perhaps there is only 'true' and '! true' after all. :-) Not even; ! isn't portable, according to the autoconf manual. paul _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
