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From: mike@whuxl.UUCP (BALDWIN)
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: Re: /bin/true
Message-ID: <1110@whuxl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 2-May-86 15:52:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: whuxl.1110
Posted: Fri May  2 15:52:02 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 3-May-86 19:36:13 EDT
References: <481@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU> <518@looking.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Whippany
Lines: 30

> In article <765@bentley.UUCP> kwh@bentley.UUCP (KW Heuer) writes:
> >Btw, I never use "true".  ":" is equivalent, and is more likely to be
> >a builtin.  I've never had a use for "false".
> 
> Their main use is to hang system-type links on.
> For example, on the system I'm typing this on,
> "gould" is linked to "true" and other system
> types such as "vax" are linked to "false".
> These commands are very useful if you maintain
> code for multiple systems all in the same place.
> [D.Gwyn]

The "proper" way to do this is by testing `uname -m`.
Linking machine types to /bin/true clutters the name
space and makes pattern matching difficult.  For instance,
how would you do the following "cleanly" using the
link /bin/true method:

case `uname -m` in
3B*)	# 3b specific
vax*)	# vax specific
esac

True, "if gould" is prettier than "if [ `uname -m` = gould ]"
but that's a poor reason.  There need to be some standards on
what `uname -m` contains, though.
-- 
						Michael Baldwin
			(not the opinions of)	AT&T Bell Laboratories
						{at&t}!whuxl!mike