Final answer:
The statement is true; $limit in a MongoDB pipeline controls the number of documents passed to the next stage without altering their content. It acts as a filter for quantity, not document structure or data.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement '$limit has no effect on the content of the documents it passes along the pipeline' is True. The $limit stage in a MongoDB pipeline specifies the maximum number of documents to pass to the next stage, but it does not alter the content of those documents. For example, if you have a collection of documents representing books and you use a $limit stage in your aggregation pipeline with a value of 5, the pipeline will only output the first five books, but the contents of those books' documents will not be modified by the $limit stage.