I also use cat this way, and for me the biggest reason is it just allows for a more intuitive left-to-right reading of any pipeline.
Things like this:
head -n 500 access.log | grep ...
head -n 500 <access.log | grep ...
Feel like you start with the filename, then go leftwards to the first operation, then start reading rightward again through the pipe. At least in my brain, it feels slightly more awkward.
Things like this:
head -n 500 access.log | grep ...
head -n 500 <access.log | grep ...
Feel like you start with the filename, then go leftwards to the first operation, then start reading rightward again through the pipe. At least in my brain, it feels slightly more awkward.