5 ms·

Returning 0 is technically doing something. It might not be something that you find useful but it is something.

• badman_ting 13y ago
  > Returning 0 is technically doing something. Yeah, but try telling your boss that :)
  • brongondwana 13y ago
    Yep, boss will turn right around and "do" paying your salary
• Danieru 13y ago
  On unix you'll find two programs which do this exact thing: `false` and `true`. False returns 1, and true returns 0. You might not believe that these are real programs but they are. You can find the binaries using `whereis`. For example on my linux install true is /bin/true. The command line is pretty awesome.
  • staz 13y ago
    And here are the actual code source for them : http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=blob_plain;f=src/true.c;hb=HEAD http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=blob_p... /bin/true source is a bit longer than expected but /bin/false implementation is really interesting : http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=blob_plain;f=src/false.c;hb=HEAD http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=blob_p...
    • disgruntledphd2 13y ago
      That is both hilarious and brilliant. The bin/false source code made me laugh out loud.
    • mtdewcmu 13y ago
      true.c could be useful as a kind of helloworld -- a minimal example of the conventions followed by gnu command line programs.
      • rm445 13y ago
        GNU Hello exists for this purpose.