Find's -true option: what for?
GNU find (and others?) has a -true
test along with the normal -name
, -mode
, -user
and so on. From the man page:
-true Always true.
Every time I see the man page I notice this and wonder when it'd be useful. So, give me some examples of when it's useful :~)
Solution 1:
Might useful for debuging when you are ANDing or ORing statements. So if you have a long command with a complex chain of arguments with lots of AND / OR between the statements, and something that isn't working like you expect, you could replace parts of it with -true to check your logic.
However, I am not sure if this is why it is there, but seems like a legitimate use.
Solution 2:
When you want to list all files in find
format to pipe into another program ?
I guess it must be more efficient than using -name "*"
or something similar.
Solution 3:
Consider find -delete -o -true -print
.
It's not too useful, but it's a pointer that you can think of -true
or -false
as means to override an in-expression result of some command with side effects.