1) Bash man page largely fails to document the true and false builtins AFAICT, except for this sentence just under the heading "^SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS":
The :, true, false, and test builtins do not accept options and do not treat -- specially. But whilst the subsequent list of Bash builtin commands DOES include entries for ":" (the very first entry) and "test", it appears to fail to include entries for "true" and for "false". This would not matter so much except for the following: 2) Why is executing "false" prior to testing it's output, apparently differen to executing "false" in a pipeline, e.g.: $ false $ test $? && echo ok || echo error $? ok $ false blah $ test $? && echo ok || echo error $? ok $ false -- $ test $? && echo ok || echo error $? ok $ true $ test $? && echo ok || echo error $? ok $ true && echo ok || echo error $? ok $ false && echo ok || echo error $? error 1 $ false blah && echo ok || echo error $? error 1 $ false 2 && echo ok || echo error $? error 1 $ false -- && echo ok || echo error $? error 1 $ builtin false -- && echo ok || echo error $? error 1 $ builtin false -- $ test $? && echo ok || echo error $? ok $ which false /bin/false $ /bin/false $ test $? && echo ok || echo error $? ok The above results are perplexing me, and frustratingly inconsistent! For example, "man false" says inter alia: NAME false - do nothing, unsuccessfully … DESCRIPTION Exit with a status code indicating failure. The descriptions suggests that /bin/false ought work outside of a pipeline in the same as way inside a pipeline - vhy, is, eet, not, so? TIA,
