Will McDonald wrote: > On 14/03/07, John Summerfield <debian at herakles.homelinux.org> wrote: >> Will McDonald wrote: >> It might be quicker, but that doesn't make it more efficient;-) > > And that's why I mentioned it'd be wise to test :) I know things are > never cut 'n dried and it depends on log makeup, datasets and whatnot. > There's always dozens of ways to do things and no one way is perfect. Or even best for everyone. > >> I often "evolve" my commandlines (I commonly use one that's 500+ >> characters long) and if I don't start with a cat I often wish I did:-/ > > I can't think of a single instance of needing to 'cat | somethingelse' > unless 'somethingelse' doesn't accept STDIN unless explicitly told > to. I could obviously be missing some corner case or just be ill > educated? :) cat /var/log/messages | grep is more easily changed to include another file cat /var/log/messages{.0,} | grep than grep cat /var/log/messages to grep -h cat /var/log/messages{.0,} | grep -h Note, I'm often typing through a modem and have to contend with unpredictable response times. Even worse is changing to include compressed files: (gunzip -dc /var/log/messages.{4,3,2,1}.gz;cat /var/log/messages{.0,})\ | grep I need to do this kind of thing fairly often. -- Cheers John -- spambait 1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu Z1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu Please do not reply off-list