> Redirection isn't a step in the pipeline It isn't implementation-wise, but it is semantically. If anything, < is a useless syntax that should never have been

> Redirection isn't a step in the pipeline It isn't implementation-wise, but it is semantically. If anything, < is a useless syntax that should never have been in the shell to begin with. If you want to peephole optimize cat... just do that, just like it replaces tons of other commands with built-ins.