True built-in
The true built-in does nothing, successfully.
Synopsis
true
Description
The true built-in does nothing, successfully. It is useful as a placeholder when a command is required but no action is needed.
Options
None.
Operands
None.
Errors
None.
In the future, the built-in may detect unexpected options or operands.
Exit Status
Zero.
Examples
See And-or lists for examples of using true in and-or lists. The examples of the getopts built-in also use true to indicate that an option is specified.
Compatibility
The true utility is specified by POSIX.1-2024.
Most implementations ignore any arguments, but some implementations respond to them. For example, the GNU coreutils implementation accepts the --help and --version options. For maximum portability, avoid passing arguments to true. To pass and ignore arguments, use the : (colon) built-in instead.