It is indeed rather ironic that an article touting the beauty and simplicity of Unix would win the "Useless Use of Cat Award". For those unfamiliar with it: ht

It is indeed rather ironic that an article touting the beauty and simplicity of Unix would win the "Useless Use of Cat Award". For those unfamiliar with it: http://partmaps.org/era/unix/award.html http://partmaps.org/era/unix/award.html The purpose of cat is to concatenate (or "catenate") files. If it's only one file, concatenating it with nothing at all is a waste of time, and costs you a process.