I prefer the trivial cat, because the < redirect puts the source in the middle of the pipe.

  cat foo.txt | bar | blah > out.log

vs.

  bar < foo.txt | blah > out.log

It looks more like what it is. Also, with cat you can add another file or use a glob, that's come in handy more than once.

Furthermore, it means the first command isn't special, if I decide I want something else as the first command I just add it. Pure... concatenation. heh.

It's useful to know both ways, I suppose. But "don't use trivial cat" is just one of those self-perpetuating doctrines, there's no actual reason not to do things that way if you want.

▲ delamon 7 months ago | parent [-]

You can do it like this:

     < foo.txt bar | blah > out.log

	▲	samatman 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		Hey, TIL. I like that more, in a way, and less, in a way. The angle bracket is pointing off into nothing but throws `foo.txt` into `bar` anyway, so the control flow seems more messed up than in `bar < foo.txt`. On the other hand it's structurally a bit more useful, because I can insert a different first stage very easily. But I still can't add a filename or change it to a glob, so cat is still more flexible. So I'm going to stick to my trivial-catting ways, but thanks for the head's up.