I think this section should just breifly describe that the file descriptors are opened before the command is executed, and that command < file1 < file2 is *similar* to cat file1 file2 | command except that the first waits for all files to be opened *before* command executes and completely fails if any file opening fails, where as cat x y z | command immediately starts processing files and simply skips ones that fail. On a more general philosophical note though, I get that context is important, but man pages and software references should **never** contain objectively false statements. It's not ok to say something that factually incorrect and justify it by assuming the reader will have enough "common sense" to determine what parts are correct and which arent. These references are the single souce of truth for a lot of readers. On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 4:31 AM Peter Stephenson