What is the use case of noop [:] in bash?

Question

I searched for noop in bash (:), but was not able to find any good information. What is the exact purpose or use case of this operator?

I tried following and it\'s w

Answer 1

Ignore alias arguments

Some times you want to have an alias that doesn't take any argument. You can do it using ::

> alias alert_with_args='echo hello there'

> alias alert='echo hello there;:'

> alert_with_args blabla
hello there blabla

> alert blabla
hello there