Why doesnt echo output the contents of the file abc.txt as shown below ?

chid@athena:~$ cat abc.txt
sssss
chid@athena:~$ echo < abc.txt

chid@athena:~$

That is an incorrect usage of "echo".

Do you have something against cat, more, less, page, etc ?

If stdin opens a file and redirects the content of the file to a command
then echo should work

I know this works

dam@athena:~$ more < abc.txt
sssss

Why then doesnt it work with echo ?

If you really want to use echo in that way then try this
Now if you have question regarding xargs then check man page that is really good.

echo doesn't use stdin !

With ksh you can do :

Jean-Pierre.

[sri]$ echo "$(<just)"
var=sri
for i in 1 2 3 4 5
do
echo "$var.$i"
done

------------------------------

[sri]$ xargs echo <just
var=sri for i in 1 2 3 4 5 do echo $var.$i done

when i use this command xargs it is giving all line in single line as shown above

so i think it would be better to use first example....

i am woundering that we can use echo in different manner..echo "$(<just)"

Thanks ..jenny...

That is not what echo does. echo prints the commandline arguments it is given, not stdin, not any other file, period. xargs is a workaround that translates things read from stdin into commandline arguments for it, an extra program to join them together. You can limit the number of commands xargs gives to a command like But, again, why not just use cat? That's what it's there for.