[xorcist]

No, it makes much more sense to start with the command that is to process the file. Most commands take a command line argument to specify which file to process. This mirrors the redirection syntax perfectly:

You say:

  grep haystack needle.txt

or:

  grep haystack < needle.txt

whereas this is more convoluted:

  cat needle.txt | grep haystack

As a bonus the syntax looks the same for output redirection:

  sort < infile.txt > outfile.txt

whereas this is not as readable:

  cat infile.txt | sort > outfile.txt

What "makes sense" to you doesn't always to other people. In this case it's trivial, but it's a nightmare to debug larger scripts when there are lots of unnecessary redirections and if statements.

Shell scripts may be one-offs, but they tend to linger. It's not unwise to spend a few extra moments to make them readable and follow best practice. It is code after all.

(Also; a bit silly with the personal attacks.)