Shorter true and true that returns false
Back in the dawn of time, true was an empty file. The OS interpreted it is 'do nothing', which it was always able to do, and returned success. Then there were lawyers who ordered everything to have a copyright notice. You can see the results here. Note that the AT&T version does not start by identifying the required interpreter. The OS sees the file is not empty, so clearly it has to do something, but has no idea what it is. As the OS cannot execute AT&T's true, it returns failure!
Sun licensed AT&T true (anyone know how much true costs?), and fixed the bug for Solaris.
It could be worse: man echo.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
