[adrian_b]

Yes, but "cat" is superfluous anyway.

You can start your pipeline with a file redirection: " <input_file prog1 | prog2 | prog3 | ... | progN >output_file".

[xboxnolifes]

My pipeline starts with displaying the file to stdout to make sure it's the correct file, and then building on from there, one new program call at a time. This is not a valid alternative.