Xref: utzoo comp.sys.3b1:501 comp.sys.att:11898
Path: utzoo!censor!geac!sq!hybrid!scifi!bywater!uunet!olivea!apple!bionet!uwm.edu!rpi!masscomp!ocpt!tsdiag!hico2!westmark!argon!ebh
From: ebh@argon.UUCP (Ed Horch)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.3b1,comp.sys.att
Subject: Re: ".GIF" files
Message-ID: <843@argon.UUCP>
Date: 22 Feb 91 13:49:22 GMT
References: <1991Feb6.215717.26551@cbnewsj.att.com> <1991Feb7.204039.5842@sonyd1.Broadcast.Sony.COM> <993@gnosys.svle.ma.us>
Reply-To: ebh@argon.UUCP (Ed Horch)
Organization: Lightspace Designs, Highland Park, NJ
Lines: 20

In article <993@gnosys.svle.ma.us> gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us (Gary S. Trujillo) writes:
>I've never understood why some people insist on using cat(1) to get stuff
>into the standard input of the lead program in a pipeline.  I claim that:
>
>	cat a | b | c
>
>is entirely equivalent in result to:
>
>	b < a | c

That's correct, but notationally, setting up a long pipeline using
only pipes is, for some people, more intuitive than throwing a re-
direction in there, since the order "do something with a, then b,
then c" is maintained.

There may be a performance cost due to creating an additional
process for "cat a", but a smart shell will know how to short-
cut around that.

-Ed