On Sat, Dec 11, 2021 at 06:06:43PM +0200, u...@mailo.com wrote: > Another reason to prefer the cat variant is that it lets you actually > string together a normal shell pipeline. For instance, if you want > progress information with cat you can combine it with the pv command: > > # Cat version with progress meter > cat image.iso | pv >/dev/sdb But you can with dd as well, and still get the useful options. $ pv image.iso | dd of=/dev/sdb bs=4M Last time I wrote a disk image I used a zcat ...img.gz | dd pipeline, could easily have included pv.
Besides, "almost not needed" applies to cat as well, between ed, sed and even dd. cat is just better^Wmore convenient than those. Creating large zeroed files? I'd make them sparse with truncate(2) long before using non-standard cat options.
