Re: Design question(s), re: why use of tmp-files or named-pipes(/dev/fd/N) instead of plain pipes?

[Chris F.A. Johnson]

On Sat, 17 Oct 2015, Linda Walsh wrote:
> Chet Ramey wrote:
> > On 10/16/15 7:52 PM, Linda Walsh wrote:
> >
> > > As I mentioned, my initial take on implementation was
> > > using standard pipes instead of named pipes (not having read
> > > or perhaps having glossed over the 'named pipes' aspect).
> >
> > I think you're missing that process substitution is a word expansion
> > that is defined to expand to a filename.  When it uses /dev/fd, it
> > uses pipes and exposes that pipe to the process as a filename in
> > /dev/fd.  Named pipes are an alternative for systems that don't support
> > /dev/fd.
> -----
>         ??? I've never seen a usage where it expands to a filename and
> is treated as such.

Try this:

echo <(cat /etc/passwd)


--
Chris F.A. Johnson, <http://cfajohnson.com>