From: Jeff Schwab <jeff@...>
Date: 2009-03-11T02:08:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Setting the contents of a file to a variable?

Torli Birnbauer wrote:

> I challenge you to 
> first explain your sarcastic concoction "tmp$ cat >| x <<EOF" which I 
> claim is an exhibitionist's exaggeration of "apparent" Unix/Perl - Ruby 
> like gibberish.

It's actually a pretty typical command line, and to Robert's credit, 
very concise.

tmp$ is a shell prompt meaning, by convention, that the shell is a 
Bourne derivative, and that its current working directory is called tmp.

cat copies its standard input to its standard output.

 >| means tells the shell to redirect cat's output to a file, and to 
overwrite the file if it already exists.

x is the name of the output file.

<<EOF means tells the shell to keep reading input for cat, until a line 
containing just the letters EOF is encountered.  EOF is a conventional 
abbreviation for "end of file."

This is one of those rare moments where RTFM really does apply.