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> The /bin/true (or /usr/bin/true) command is now nearly obsolete, because most extant shells now have a builtin "true" command. But it's still useful occasiona
by viseztrance 5y ago
> The /bin/true (or /usr/bin/true) command is now nearly obsolete, because most extant shells now have a builtin "true" command. But it's still useful occasionally, for various silly reasons [...]
This make it sound like this is useless, but I disagree. For example, recently I had some games crash because they couldn't find pulseaudio, and making a symlink from pulseaudio to /bin/true fixed my issue (and yes, they had sound). So there are certainly legitimate uses for it.
- jzwinck 5y agoInstead of a symlink to true you could have made an empty script.
- michaelt 5y agoAnd violate AT&T's copyright? Perish the thought!
- viseztrance 5y agoWell the symlink command was also easier to share with others having the same issue, whereas a one liner that creates an executable script which returns 0 is less ideal.
- cmeacham98 5y agoAn empty script returns 0 by default, thus `touch /path/to/missing/library` is a sufficient (and shorter!) one-liner fix to this problem.
- viseztrance 5y agoI know, but you still have to make it executable, hence it's not as convenient. And on top of this, an unlink is less error prone than a rm -f.