Find's -true option: what for?

Question

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 :~)

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 22 '09 at 13:04

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.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 19 '10 at 10:19

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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.

answered Aug 19 '10 at 10:19

diunko

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 22 '09 at 11:10

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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.

answered Sep 22 '09 at 11:10

Julien

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`find` with no arguments at all does that. – Dennis Williamson Sep 22 '09 at 12:17
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Sure, but it's more explicit and has the same syntax with `-true` – Julien Sep 22 '09 at 12:55
How so? – Dennis Williamson Sep 22 '09 at 13:16

Find's -true option: what for?

3 Answers3