[jmholla]

I use cat like this all the time. It means I can easily change whatever program I'm using to interact with the program (e.g. switching `tr` to `sed`).

[yakubin]

You can replace "cat /usr/share/dict |" in that invokation with "</usr/share/dict" and it will be equally easy to switch between tr and sed. Yes, you can put that redirection at the start, not just at the end of a command line. Although I admit I still haven't got used to doing it.