Is there a unix command that does nothing?

Johnny

This isn't a biggie - I was wondering if there is a standard command that actually just returns back to the shell.

Much like /dev/null can be used to dump text to no where.

I see /usr/bin/wait on my solaris 8 machine which could be used for that, but I was wondering if there is a specific command for this - it's just a nice to know.

Reason being -

We have an open deploy DNR that executes as part of our deployment. We deploy to 3 servers in production, but only one machine is ever "active". They may swap them over for maintenance or failover etc.

This DNR should only be executed on the active server, but for ease of maintenance for us, I want our deployments to be the same on each server - that is run the DNR on each machine.

That means that during the process of making a prod server active, they could sym link to the real DNR and the others can sym link to a dummy script that actually does nothing.

Unless you can think of an easier way?..

John Cuiuli

JonathonG

Any reason you can't write an executable shell script that does nothing and symlink to it? Something like:

#!/usr/bin/ksh

Jonathon
Interwoven Developer
Allstate, Inc.