Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

A faster approach

On most modern systems, true is implemented as a binary in /bin. This means that each time the aforementioned while loop runs, the shell has to spawn a process. To avoid this, we can use the shell built-in : command, which always returns an exit code 0:

repeat() { while :; do $@ && return; done }

Though not as readable, this is faster than the first approach.