18 lines
2.6 KiB
HTML
18 lines
2.6 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>UUOC</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../U.html" title="U"/><link rel="previous" href="UTSL.html" title="UTSL"/><link rel="next" href="../V.html" title="V"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">UUOC</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="UTSL.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">U</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="../V.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="UUOC"/><dt xmlns="" id="UUOC"><b>UUOC</b></dt></dt><dd><p> [from the comp.unix.shell group on Usenet] Stands for <span class="firstterm">Useless Use of <a href="../C/cat.html"><i class="glossterm">cat</i></a></span>; the
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reference is to the Unix command
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<span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">cat</span>(1)</span>,
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not the feline animal. As received wisdom on comp.unix.shell observes,
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“<span class="quote">The purpose of cat is to concatenate (or ‘catenate’)
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files. If it's only one file, concatenating it with nothing at all is a
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waste of time, and costs you a process.</span>” Nevertheless one sees
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people doing</p><div class="literallayout"><p><br/>
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cat file | some_command and its args ...<br/>
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</p></div><p>instead of the equivalent and cheaper</p><div class="literallayout"><p><br/>
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<file some_command and its args ...<br/>
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</p></div><p>or (equivalently and more classically)</p><div class="literallayout"><p><br/>
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some_command and its args ... <file<br/>
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</p></div><p>Since 1995, occasional awards for UUOC have been given out, usually
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by Perl luminary Randal L. Schwartz. There is a <a href="http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~reriksso/unix/award.html" target="_top"> web
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page</a> devoted to this and other similar awards.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="UTSL.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../U.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="../V.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">UTSL </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> V</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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