yes(1)

26 Oct 2013

I used the yes command (Linux/Unix/Mac OS X) for the first time the other day. Here’s a description of what it does:

YES(1)                    BSD General Commands Manual                   YES(1)

NAME
     yes -- be repetitively affirmative

SYNOPSIS
     yes [expletive]

DESCRIPTION
     yes outputs expletive, or, by default, ``y'', forever.

HISTORY
     The yes command appeared in 4.0BSD.

By way of example:

17:01 ~ $ yes
y
y
y
y
y
y
y
y
y
y
y
y

Seems like an invaluable tool for promotion:

17:01 ~ $ yes "the regex king"
the regex king
the regex king
the regex king
the regex king
the regex king
the regex king
the regex king
the regex king
the regex king
the regex king
the regex king
the regex king
the regex king

• Aran on Jul 07, 2023 at 8:14 AM: I think the classical use for yes was

  yes | fsck /dev/dev

  fsck used to prompt for every thing it did, yet it was unlikely the user had any other way to fix a broken filesystem so answering yes made sense... along with a prayer.