41–50 of 113 posts
Rather, people argue against useless use of cat, which is different. Personally, I'd never argue against it on the command-line even though some do. It's once you commit your pipeline to a script where you may as well remove it.
There are also suitable uses of cat that I don't think anyone would argue against. Besides the obvious use of outputting one or more files, it's also often used with here docs.
if you prefer to use cat just to read your pipeline from left to right, you can just start your command with file redirection. It doesn't have to be at the end of the command. this works in bash too, but if you're using zsh, there're a couple of nice shortcuts on it's own works as more file and > file ... ... ^D allows you to put something into the file quickly without firing up the editor. Though > file will give yo…
If I saw It would give me pause. If I saw cat file | grep ... I would understand it instantly, as would any other Unix user. Therefore the latter is better code.
grep file?What, exactly, are the arguments against `cat`?
> Because for me it'd only be a local maxima. Nitpick: this should be „maximum“, maxima is the plural.
I'm a believer in the ditt-k-pow, DTTCPW, the Dumbest Thing That Could Possibly Work. What, exactly, are the arguments against `cat`?
I don't mind either way but I find starting with a cat and reading LTR to be very easy to understand.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I have ever used tac for real. Could you give an example?
When you want to tail a file, but you want it in descending order and you’re not sure how much of it you want: tac file | less
less foo.log
Gif you prefer to use cat just to read your pipeline from left to right, you can just start your command with file redirection. It doesn't have to be at the end of the command. this works in bash too, but if you're using zsh, there're a couple of nice shortcuts on it's own works as more file and > file ... ... ^D allows you to put something into the file quickly without firing up the editor. Though > file will give yo…
If I saw It would give me pause. If I saw cat file | grep ... I would understand it instantly, as would any other Unix user. Therefore the latter is better code.