[wwalexander]

You can still just begin with <somefile instead of cat somefile |. Does it really matter? No, but I don’t think pointing out useful and concise built-ins is necessarily asinine.

[AStonesThrow]

No, in ordinary usage it doesn't matter, and it's not like I would go out of my way to change someone else's script code.

But if teaching or demonstrating shell features, I'd say that it's important to know that redirection is the most efficient, explicit, and available method.

Indeed, a student could learn "cat file | ..." as a standard idiom and never use an initial redirect, but what happens when they come across one "in the wild"? They should know its proper interpretation, because it can otherwise be a bit jarring to see and difficult to interpret.

[wwalexander]

Something worth noting that I just noticed: on macOS (zsh), <somefile on its own seems to automatically page the output, whereas cat will simply print the entire file.

So I think I’d definitely tend to prefer <somefile when building up a pipeline. But certainly nobody should be shamed for doing things in the way that feels familiar and ergonomic to them!

[jchw]

Yeah, there are still some edge cases where cat is useful, but more often than not I just begin the redirection. I reckon some don't realize you can put it at the beginning, which does sometimes feel more ergonomic in a pipeline.

[JoshTriplett]

It's not that it feels awkward to write the redirection first. It's that it feels awkward to write `< file cmd`, with no operator between the filename and the command, and the redirection operator not pointing at the command.

[kortilla]

A pipeline without pipes connecting is just a field of shit

[kelnos]

Can you? In bash I end up with no input at all if I start the line with '<somefile'.

[xelxebar]

Ahem, try this: <file cat