Be aware that "cat file | less" is much more expensive than "less file" because it forces less to buffer everything it reads (it can't seek on a pipe). "cat hug

Be aware that "cat file | less" is much more expensive than "less file" because it forces less to buffer everything it reads (it can't seek on a pipe). "cat huge-logfile | tail" is especially bad because it uselessly reads the whole file (and evicts a bunch of more important data from your buffer cache) where "tail huge-logfile" would just seek backwards from the end until it has enough text.