On unix you'll find two programs which do this exact thing: `false` and `true`. False returns 1, and true returns 0.

You might not believe that these are real programs but they are. You can find the binaries using `whereis`. For example on my linux install true is /bin/true.

The command line is pretty awesome.

And here are the actual code source for them :

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=blob_p...

/bin/true source is a bit longer than expected but /bin/false implementation is really interesting : http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=blob_p...

That is both hilarious and brilliant. The bin/false source code made me laugh out loud.

true.c could be useful as a kind of helloworld -- a minimal example of the conventions followed by gnu command line programs.

GNU Hello exists for this purpose.

> Returning 0 is technically doing something.

Yeah, but try telling your boss that :)

Yep, boss will turn right around and "do" paying your salary