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Internet memes are pretty popular these days, but they have always
been around and they have always been irritating.  One of the oldest
Internet memes goes like this:

  From: Some Person <some@person.com>
  Subject: Re: some problem that can be solved with a shell script

  Hi, I use this command:

    $ cat foo | perl -ne 'blah'

Then, a minute later, a reply:

  From: Ai Knowitall <wizard@jackass.com>
  Subject: USELESS USE OF CAT!!11!!

  > $ cat foo | perl -ne 'blah'

  This is a useless use of cat, you idiot.  You are so dumb!  What
  an idiot you are!  Have I made it clear that you are stupid?

  Why are you invoking "cat" when you could just write:

    $ perl -ne 'blah' < foo

  Think of all the memory you are wasting, retardo!  Would you write:

    $ cat foo | cat | cat | cat | cat | cat | perl -ne 'blah'

  No!!11! Fap fap fap!

I am not exaggerating -- search your favorite mailing list archive for
C<cat | cat | cat> and you will see this come up all the time.  Here
is a L<whole site about it|http://partmaps.org/era/unix/award.html>.
(Incidentally, this is apparently a movement pioneered by Randal
Schwartz.  Small world.)

Anyway, this kind of response is annoying.  C<cat> is not that heavy
of a utility, and it gets the job done.  I often prefer to use cat,
because it makes for a more readable command line.  If you write:

   $ bar < foo | baz | quux > canned-air

It is hard to see the flow of the data.  It's not C<quite> left-to-right.
This is a little better:

  $ < foo bar | baz | quux > canned-air

It's still pretty ugly.  If you "uselessly" use cat, though,
everything is clear:

  $ cat foo | bar | baz | quux > canned-air

The data flows from the left and ends up on the right.

I think it's worth wasting the 4 bytes of memory that C<cat> uses for
this readability improvement.  It's certainly not worth whining about
on a mailing list, that's for sure.
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