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markdrayton
Asked: 2009-09-23 01:16:14 +0800 CST

Find's -true option: what for?

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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 :~)

linux

3 Answers

  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.

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  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.

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  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.

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