Some would call the former command cat abuse.
In short, unless you want the contents of a file printed to stdout (or multiple files concatenated), the command can probably be written without cat
, instead using the filename as an argument (grep pattern file
) or IO redirection (cmd < file
).
Stylistics and readability are another thing though.
It's a line from The Kinks' Lola.
The first bit, not the bit about fascists. But I suspect they'd be on board with that.