Re: best practices for checking system return values for piped commands?

[billh]

Just to add a little to what others have said, 'true' is not the best possible choice for a 2nd command since:
1. it isn't reading it's stdin in so won't detect anything wrong.
2. 'true' tries its hardest to live up to its name, always exiting with status zero.

[markjugg]

"true" is a great choice to illustrate my test, as it is a great example of an utility which "succeeds" even with no input piped to it.