If you want to have a program that outputs binary data to stdout, then accept binary data on stdin, there’s no reason not to. It isn’t the standard for histori

If you want to have a program that outputs binary data to stdout, then accept binary data on stdin, there’s no reason not to. It isn’t the standard for historical reasons, and because text is easier to bootstrap from manually-inspected results into a script. For example, the easiest way I’ve found to render generated images into a gif or mp4 is to pipe a sequence of ppm-encoded images into ffmpeg.