Date: Fri, 08 Jan 1999 21:22:25 -0500 From: Graeme Tait <graeme@echidna.com> To: Malartre <malartre@aei.ca> Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The FreeBSD User Guide Message-ID: <3696BD61.F5@echidna.com> References: <36958774.8135CE68@aei.ca> <3696183A.1FD5@echidna.com> <3696B0D6.E6975FCD@aei.ca>
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Malartre wrote: > > Graeme Tait wrote: > > Certainly "cat filename | more" is redundant: "more filename" is sufficient. > > > > -- > > Graeme Tait - Echidna > Well, you should have seen > http://www.aei.ca/~malartre/freebsd/more1.html > And has K. Marsh said, how could I introduce pipe so simply without the > cat exemple :-) (Please note, I'm not complaining about your user guide - I think it's great! However, the cat example struck a nerve!) There's no need to use cat in a case like that above. I think its best not to give newbies examples they have to unlearn - I've already been down this path with cat, having found a similar example in a standard UNIX text. As a beginner, you get into questions like "well it looks like I could just do 'more filename' but the book says 'cat filename | more' so I guess there must be a good reason for that, so I'll follow the book ... but ???". I would choose a simple case where the pipe is clearly necessary. For example, > ls -l | more to page a file listing of a directory with many files, say /usr/bin . This lets you introduce the pipe and the paging program. The example you give uses cat to transfer the contents of a file to stdout, and pipes that to stdin. AFAIK, since most commands (that can accept input from stdin) can accept input from a single file directly, this application of cat has very limited utility. The true uses I've found for cat are (1) creating short text files directly, as in > cat > file[input text here] ^D and (2) concatenating files, as in > cat file1 file2 > bothfiles -- Graeme Tait - Echidna To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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