Why is the file /bin/false so large?

[Loïc Grenié]

2010/2/9 Smoot Carl-Mitchell <smoot at tic.com>:
> On Tue, 2010-02-09 at 13:16 +0100, Loïc Grenié wrote:
>>     You can substitute it with the much smaller
>>
>> #!/bin/sh
>> exit 1
>>
>>   or, for true,
>>
>> #!/bin/sh
>> exit 0
>
> You could do the above shell substitutions, but the command will run
> slower, since it has to load and execute the shell to only execute an
> exit statement.

    As explained in a separate e-mail, you don't need to load the shell,
  (it's probably already loaded for other scripts) just initialize it.
  I agree it's probably slower anyway (init is probably longer in bash
  than in true/false) but not by much. I repeat: this is not intended for
  a sensible alternative; just a possible, not as stupid as it seems,
  shorter alternative.

    In SunOS 4.something, true and false were done that way. They
  were even v1.2 or 1.3 (which is kind of funny).

        Loïc