On Sun, 3 Dec 2006, Paul Lutus wrote:

> William James wrote:
>
>> ara.t.howard / noaa.gov wrote:
>>> for years i've felt that i should be able to pipe numerical output into
>>> some unix command like so
>>>
>>>    cat list | mean
>>>    cat list | sum
>>>    cat list | minmax
>>
>> Why drag in the cat when it's utterly superfluous?
>>
>>   mean <list
>>   sum <list
>>   minmax <list
>
> Yes, true, but in a simple example like this, 'cat' is just a stand-in for
> some other application that would stream the numbers. In such a case, the
> pipe seems more appropriate.

the main reason that i use cat in real life in situations like this is because
hitting up arrow and changing mean -> sum, for instance, is easier!  ;-)

-a
-- 
if you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
if you want to be happy, practice compassion.  -- the dalai lama