Import question

[Jean-Pierre A. Radley]

John Esak propounded (on Thu, Mar 23, 2006 at 11:32:31AM -0500):
| 	rom: Kenneth Brody [mailto:kenbrody at bestweb.net]
| > [...]
| > >     tr -d "\0" <file1.txt >file2.txt
| 
| > second).  One final question, what does the < do?
| >
| > Don Coleman
| 
| The < is a re-direct operator just like the >. < means take input from this
| file and the > means send to this file. You probably know this, so what you
| might really be asking is why is it needed when sometimes the command will
| work without it?  Often one or the other of these re-directors is built into
| or assumed by the command... sometimes based on argument position or
| whatever. I like to always use them whether they are needed or not to keep
| things very readable.

The tr command does not take a filename argument; it reads stdin. So a
redirection to stdin is needed always, not sometimes.

-- 
JP
	==> http://www.frappr.com/cusm <==