9 ms·

ag Needle < haystack No need for cat

• torstenvl 8y ago
  Your version requires fewer keystrokes. It's also mental model-breaking and un-Unixy. Pipes, my good man! Pipe everything to everything!
  • muxator 8y ago
    How come knowing how to redirect stdin is un-Unixy? Pipes are a good tool, and so are many others. Having a good command of other basic mechanisms of the shell is going to hugely pay off, try to have a brief shot if you want [0]. [0] https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Redirections.html https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Redirecti...
  • twic 8y ago
    No. Useless Use of Cat is sufficiently unidiomatic that there is an award for it: http://porkmail.org/era/unix/award.html http://porkmail.org/era/unix/award.html
    • torstenvl 8y ago
      No. Being smug doesn't make someone right. Especially when the smug person is advocating a special case. Special cases are inherently wrong, even when they "save" a process.
      • xorcist 8y ago
        If the most logical syntax is grep needle haystack Surely grep needle < haystack is much closer to that form than cat haystack | grep needle
  • rleigh 8y ago
    Mm, input redirection with the shell is the very epitomy of basic Unix functionality.
  • BenjiWiebe 8y ago
    < haystack ag Needle Will work too, and now it's in the logical order.