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Re: true
From: |
Bob Proulx |
Subject: |
Re: true |
Date: |
Fri, 19 Apr 2002 22:51:25 -0600 |
> is this a joke? or poor usage of a man-page template? or an honest
> mistake?
Generally folks on the bug list always try to make sure people get a
reasonable response to bug reports submitted. But I am sorry that I
cannot discern what issue you are trying to report in the mail that
you submitted. I could only see confusion over the options and
therefore will only answer that.
> Obviously, since the command line arguments are ignored, neither --help
> nor --version do ANYTHING.
The man page is automatically generated from the --help output by a
command called help2man and the "or:" was lost in the translation. It
will either ignore the command line arguments OR it will take one of
those two options. The --help output shows the details.
true --help
Usage: true [ignored command line arguments]
or: true OPTION
But your man page seems truncated. It should have had a section
directing you to the 'info true' page for the complete documentation
on the command. There you would have found the following:
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'.
Therefore it only ignores those if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. Otherwise
you will get the version output and the help output from the command.
Here is what the standards say about it.
http://www.unix-systems.org/single_unix_specification_v2/xcu/true.html
HTH
Bob
> okay - this is taken from the man page for true (as distributed with
> Slackware linux 8.0)
>
> NAME
> true - do nothing, successfully
>
> SYNOPSIS
> true [ignored command line arguments]
> true OPTION
>
> DESCRIPTION
> Exit with a status code indicating success.
>
> These option names may not be abbreviated.
>
> --help display this help and exit
>
> --version
> output version information and exit
>
> REPORTING BUGS
> Report bugs to <address@hidden>.
>
>
> is this a joke? or poor usage of a man-page template? or an honest
> mistake?
>
> Obviously, since the command line arguments are ignored, neither --help
> nor --version do ANYTHING.
> I find this to be funny even if it was intentional. if not, its even
> funnier.
- true, Perl Monkee, 2002/04/17