Shell scripting is one of those places where readability is king, and premature optimization is the devil.<p>Yes, there are multiple ways to get by without cat. Are they as obvious to understand? If not, what are we doing?<p>Shell scripting isn't meant for performance but composability. If you're fighting me over micro optimizations, I'm just going to rewrite it in a proper language and 100x its performance. But then it's lost its readability and it's no longer editable.<p>Balance, like most things in life.