False built-in

The false built-in does nothing, unsuccessfully.

Synopsis

false

Description

The false built-in does nothing and returns a non-zero exit status.

Options

None.

Operands

None.

Errors

None.

In the future, the built-in may detect unexpected options or operands.

Exit Status

1.

Examples

See And-or lists for examples of using false in and-or lists. The examples of the getopts built-in also use false to indicate that an option is not specified.

Compatibility

The false utility is specified by POSIX.1-2024.

POSIX allows false to return any non-zero exit status, but most implementations return 1.

Most implementations ignore any arguments, but some implementations may respond to them. For example, the GNU coreutils implementation accepts the --help and --version options. For maximum portability, avoid passing arguments to false.

POSIX lists both the OPTIONS and OPERANDS sections of false as “None.”, which means a conforming implementation need not support any option or operand. (Since 3.3.5) When the portable option is set, the built-in prints a warning if it is given any argument, including a lone --. The warning does not affect the exit status, and the argument is still ignored.