[TUHS] The UNIX Command Language (1976)

[arnold at skeeve.com]

Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:

> This has always struck me as particularly elegant in scripts. Consider:
>
>     cat "$@" | whatever
>
> (Or you may prefer `cat $* | whatever`)
>
> Now one's script can take any number of file arguments or stdin, even if
> the filter does not.

I think Dan has hit the heart of the matter. People are used to using
cat for multiple files to start pumping data down a pipeline, so they
continue to do so even when there's only one file.

Arnold