5 ms·

I feel you. I still `cat foo | grep bar` instead of `grep foo bar`

• nielsole 3y ago
  The reason I stick to `cat foo | grep bar` is that I am never quite sure if `grep bar foo` would be correct instead (it is).
  • im3w1l 3y ago
    The file argument is usually the last so that you can do eg `grep foo -- *`
  • btgeekboy 3y ago
    I remember it as "grep for a needle in a haystack"
• jrm4 3y ago
  But to me -- this is different? I believe "useless use of cat" is FAR MORE useful than what the ultra-nerds say; I could care less about "saving a few characters." The mental model of the pipeline --in one end and out the other -- is entirely too usefully intuitive and way better than some imaginary geek-cred. (I was more thinking about the new rust tools, e.g. rg instead of grep)
  • systems_glitch 3y ago
    Plus sometimes you want to throw something like `pv` in.
  • simon04 3y ago
    Plus the regex is more likely incorrect in the first attempt and needs to be fixed.
• _V_ 3y ago
  The former has one big advantage: I can easily change "needle" without having to skip all over the cmdline... Pretty usefull when debugging something interactively.
• MathMonkeyMan 3y ago
  Might help to replace cat foo | $command with <foo $command It's the same order, but I think $command can sniff what kind of file stdin is, and optimize.
• ezequiel-garzon 3y ago
  Actually instead of `grep bar foo`.