What exit value does the command 'false' align with and what does that mean?

• A. 0 — It always runs successfully.
• B. 2 — It is inconclusive.
• C. 1 — It always fails.
• D. 255 — It terminates with an error.

Answer: (C)

In Unix-like systems, an exit status communicates success or failure: 0 means success, any non-zero value indicates failure. The command false is deliberately designed to indicate failure, and it does so by returning an exit code of 1. So the exit value is 1, which means the command did not succeed. This is useful in scripts to force a failure path or to test how code handles errors. It does not return 0 (that would be success), nor is 2 or 255 the standard signal for false—the canonical value for this command is 1, signaling failure.