I use cat like this all the time. It means I can easily change whatever program I'm using to interact with the program (e.g. switching `tr` to `sed`).

You can replace "cat /usr/share/dict |" in that invokation with "</usr/share/dict" and it will be equally easy to switch between tr and sed. Yes, you can put that redirection at the start, not just at the end of a command line. Although I admit I still haven't got used to doing it.

I posted some advice in a sibling thread, <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31021503>, that applies here as well:

> Please don't use $RANDOM or $((RANDOM)) or standard `shuf` for password generation. These RNGs are not cryptographically secure. Use input from /dev/urandom instead.

You can do this with "shuf --random-source=/dev/urandom".

The same with gshuf.

I use an alias to add this switch by default.

When using shuf for cryptographic purposes, I'd first check if it advertises as being able to be a secure cryptographic token generator when provided with a secure random source. It might very well use modulo operations, for example.