Re: Not so useless use of cat

[arnold]

Chet Ramey <chet.ramey@case.edu> wrote:

> Yes, on this one.  There are others; recall the `discussion' about
> whether bash should choose between /dev/fd or FIFOs for process
> substitution at runtime.

That's a tougher one. It's a question of how far back do you wish
to continue supporting systems?

I'm finding that modern systems have pretty much the union of things
that I need, and also that the older ones that don't simply aren't
in use anymore.  E.g., do you still need to support SunOS 4.1.x? Ultrix?
OSF/1? Irix?

I removed a lot of crufty code in gawk ~3 years ago to zero complaints.
You might be able to do that in Bash (e.g., assume /dev/fd), especially
if you do it a major release point (Bash 5.0).

Again, my two cents' worth. And I understand that gawk doesn't make
the same demands of the OS that Bash does.

HTH,

Arnold