13.6. Use the exec Statement in Wrapper Scripts

If the port installs a shell script whose purpose is to launch another program, and if launching that program is the last action performed by the script, make sure to launch the program using the exec statement, for instance:

#!/bin/sh
exec %%LOCALBASE%%/bin/java -jar %%DATADIR%%/foo.jar "$@"

The exec statement replaces the shell process with the specified program. If exec is omitted, the shell process remains in memory while the program is executing, and needlessly consumes system resources.

All FreeBSD documents are available for download at https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/doc/

Questions that are not answered by the documentation may be sent to <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org>.
Send questions about this document to <freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org>.