Piping problems

[biddlesby]

Hi guys, I'm trying to get to grips with pipe.

Often I want to look at the python code behind one of my custom scripts in the terminal. Usually I type "which myCommand", select the full path given, and use "cat".

From what I've read, a pipe "|" passes the output of the left hand side to the input of the right. So why doesn't this work?

which myCommand | cat

Thanks!

Harry

[Irithori]

Because the pipe connects to stdin, but in this case you need to pass the path/filename as an argument.

Try this

which myCommand |xargs -l1 cat

[Cabhan]

Although Irithori's command does work (xargs takes stdin and uses it as commandline arguments), it is not the best way to achieve what you want.

You want to replace a part of a commandline with the output of another command. The standard way of doing this is:

cat $(which myCommand)

[biddlesby]

Hi guys, thanks for your answers.

The xargs way works fine. However, when I use

cat $(which myCommand)

I get a "Illegal variable name." I did hit on some success with this:

cat `which myCommand`

[Irithori]

The $() construct works in bash.
And I agree with Cabhan, that it is nicer to read.

Which shell do you use?

[biddlesby]

That would explain it; I'm using tcsh.