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Help me understand bash syntax
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this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2025
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You could use "-" as argument for file:
find /usr/lib -maxdepth 1 -type l | head -n 1 | file -
which means, 'file' will read its input from the pipe. But that is probably not what you want, because 'file' parses the input and does not accept it as an argument.
You use a pipe to pass the output of a program to another program, in order to do something with that input. Like:
cat unsorted_list.txt | sort -
Thanks! I actually did try that, at which point it said "/dev/stdin ASCII text" or the likes, so it's like the file command literally read the stdin device. Which was extremely intriguing, but not what I wanted. God, I love Linux :D
It's not like it, it's exactly it. The output from find is text,
-means read stdin, so file told you the text in stdin was text. You'll have to see if it takes a list of files as an option, otherwise just use a for loop.