I'd suggest against the xargs method. I'm surprised it worked at all for one thing; I didn't know it was able to swallow quotes like that, and I don't think you can depend on it always doing so the way you expect. Consider what xargs is actuallly for: converting lists into arguments. You're sending it scripts, not lists, which it may cheerfully mangle on the assumption that it can break lists apart wherever it wants.

Code:

echo a b c d e f | xargs cat

xargs might run cat a b c d e f. It could also run cat a b c ; cat d e f and not be in error. For cat, the result is the same. But you can't split a script like that and expect it to work!

vpass $account bash < commands on the other hand can swallow and run any valid shell script. You could put quite complex things in commands if you wanted.

As for performance, the shell has to read the file whenever it wants to run it, just like anything else. When you were running 'cat commands' it was reading it from disk too. The operating system will try to keep the entire file in memory if anything uses it, though, which lets the second time its read avoid the disk entirely. The OS will cache almost all disk I/O from any source if it can. (sometimes even when you don't want it to )

Your disk can probably read scripts faster than your computer can run them in any case.

On the remote host it's never cached. That's kind of the point -- you wanted to keep one master copy and not worry about having two dozen copies on your clients. This isn't a problem unless your script's gigantic, your network's very slow, and your connection's very unreliable.

The total disk reads and network traffic is similar to your original method anyway. The lines have to get from disk to A to B one way or another.