On Tue, 22 Jun 1999, Michael G. Schabert wrote:

> As I was doing a make build, I happened to watch as it was doing stuff in
> /usr/src/usr.bin...& was curious when I saw this thing called "yes". So I
> read the manpage. When I read it, I thought to myself "now that seems
> really stupid. Why would anyone want to do that?" So, being the
> sometimes-adventurous sort, I went ahead and typed "yes".
> 
> That brings me full circle to my original thought...that seems awfully
> stupid. Why would anyone want to do that?
> 
> It took me forever to get my ctrl-c command through, what with the
> incessant scrolling & all. Is there actually an application for such a
> command, or did I miss something?

It's for scripting commands that insist on prompting the user. e.g.

yes | rm -iR ~/ 2>&1 /dev/null

!!