Aha, that helps explain the discrepancy of OS X 10.7: $ ls -la /usr/bin/true /usr/bin/false -r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 34240 Jul 20 2011 /usr/bin/fals

Aha, that helps explain the discrepancy of OS X 10.7: $ ls -la /usr/bin/true /usr/bin/false -r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 34240 Jul 20 2011 /usr/bin/false -r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 34240 Jul 20 2011 /usr/bin/true $ cmp -l /usr/bin/true /usr/bin/false |wc 8194 24582 114716 and CentOS 6: $ ls -la /bin/true /bin/false -rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 25144 Dec 7 14:51 /bin/false -rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 25144 Dec 7 14:51 /bin/true $ cmp -l /bin/true /bin/false |wc 355 1065 4970 The signature size explains (part of) the larger delta on OS X, but left me wondering, so: ~/coreutils/src]$ ls -alrth true.c false.c -rw-r--r-- 1 dvd staff 2.2K Jan 30 09:31 true.c -rw-r--r-- 1 dvd staff 51B Jan 30 09:31 false.c Curious! ~/coreutils/src]$ cat false.c #define EXIT_STATUS EXIT_FAILURE #include "true.c" And figuring out why that still results in such a large binary delta is over my head.