From: Steven Lumos <steven@...>
Date: 2006-12-03T18:32:54+09:00
Subject: Re: calculations on lists of numbers

ara.t.howard@noaa.gov writes:

> On Sun, 3 Dec 2006, Paul Lutus wrote:
>
>> William James wrote:
>>
>>> ara.t.howard@noaa.gov wrote:
>>>> for years i've felt that i should be able to pipe numerical output into
>>>> some unix command like so
>>>>
>>>>    cat list | mean
>>>>    cat list | sum
>>>>    cat list | minmax
>>>
>>> Why drag in the cat when it's utterly superfluous?
>>>
>>>   mean <list
>>>   sum <list
>>>   minmax <list
>>
>> Yes, true, but in a simple example like this, 'cat' is just a stand-in for
>> some other application that would stream the numbers. In such a case, the
>> pipe seems more appropriate.
>
> the main reason that i use cat in real life in situations like this is because
> hitting up arrow and changing mean -> sum, for instance, is easier!  ;-)
>
> -a

  $ <list mean

Steve