Windows Server® 2012 Unleashed

The Pipeline

In the past, data was transferred from one command to the next by using the pipeline, which makes it possible to string a series of commands together to gather information from a system. However, as mentioned previously, most shells have a major disadvantage: The information gathered from commands is text based. Raw text needs to be parsed (transformed) into a format the next command can understand before being piped.

The point is that although most UNIX and Linux shell commands are powerful, using them can be complicated and frustrating. Because these shells are text based, often commands lack functionality or require using additional commands or tools to perform tasks. To address the differences in text output from shell commands, ...