Re: bash built-ins `true' and `false' undocumented

[Roland Winkler]

On Fri Sep 27 2013 Chris Down wrote:
> Well, they're directly part of the POSIX spec. I'm not sure there's a
> need to reiterate absolutely everything that is already required by
> POSIX.

Well, the question is whether the info manual should provide a
self-contained documentation or whether it should start with the
warning: 

  This documentation assumes the user to be familiar with the POSIX spec.

I never looked into the POSIX spec. I learned bash only from its
info pages.

Re: bash built-ins `true' and `false' undocumented

[Roland Winkler]

On Sat Sep 28 2013 Mike Frysinger wrote:
> on a GNU system, coreutils provides `true` and `false` as well as man & info 
> pages.  i don't think having bash duplicate things would be useful in any way.

The "NOTE" issued by

   $ /bin/true --help

was one reason for me I looked into this.  I assume that for GNU
bash this note refers to bash's info pages (and not, for example, to
some POSIX spec).  (And please do not tell me that the buried note
about bash true not supporting options was sufficient here.  There
is no need to keep info pages as cryptic short as possible.)


$ /bin/true --help
Usage: /bin/true [ignored command line arguments]
  or:  /bin/true OPTION
Exit with a status code indicating success.

  --help display this help and exit
  --version  output version information and exit

NOTE: your shell may have its own version of true, which usually supersedes
the version described here.  Please refer to your shell's documentation
for details about the options it supports.