[rescue] Hark, something from the depths of the storage closet!

[Sheldon T. Hall]

Jonathan C. Patschke writes ...
> On Fri, 16 May 2003, Sheldon T. Hall wrote:
>
> > Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 19:14:23 -0400
> > > [1] cat `which true` to get the joke, unless, of course,
> you're on a GNU
> > >     system, in which case the joke becomes significantly less funny.
> >
> > The joke becomes downright odd on this machine ...
>
> ---snip---
>
> > Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>
> That's what I mean.  GNU distributes a compiled true.  The traditional
> true is a /bin/sh script consisting solely of the comments that make up
> the copyright notice about it being proprietary and unpublished AT&T
> (or Microsoft) source code.  The "unpublished" part is wonderfully
> ironic.

My Solaris 7 has the shell-script-that's-all-comments type of true, which
is, as you say, somewhat amusing.

The SCO development box at the office has a link from /bin/true to some
_long_ directory name.  The actual file (i.e the true true) is zero bytes
long.  In that case, the joke is that the link to it takes up more disk
space than the file itself, and, if you think about it, the command the
installer used to create the link is probably longer than

	> /bin/true

too.

"Unix, there's more than one way to do ... nothing."

-Shel