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Comment by piperswe | Hacker News Reader

Same here. I use `cat` as a tool to read data from the filesystem into a pipeline, regardless if that's the initial intention of the tool. I don't want the input filename being to the right of the first manipulation command in a pipeline that's supposed to read left to right!

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Its actually part of the POSIX standard that redirections can be put anywhere in the command line, so one can do:

  <file.txt sed 's/some/filter' | other_cmd

on any standard compliantish shell :) (I use zsh, and I know it also works for bash and dash)

Never knew this. Looking at it now. First impression, I can't tell if this is idiotic or genius :)

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