Re: [PATCH] Remove useless uses of cat, and replace with filename arguments or redirection

Stephen Rothwell writes:

On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:34:59 -0700 Josh Triplett [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

-commits=$(cat ../revs | wc -l | tr -d " ")
+commits=$(wc -l ../revs | tr -d " ")

This is not equivalent, you probably wanted:

commits=$(wc -l <../revs | tr -d " ")

Which relevant version(s) of wc do not accept filename arguments?
POSIX[1] seems to specify it.  Or do you mean that there is some
subtle difference in its processing of stdin vs specified files?

[1]- http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/utilities/wc.html

Michael Poole