Here strings

Here strings are similar to Here documents but allows you to do this on one line:

1command <<<"some string"

For example, the following commands do the same thing, count the number of words in a string:

1echo "This is a test" | wc -w
2
3wc -w <<<"This is a test"

You can also pipe the output of commands as a here string:

1ps -fe | wc -l
2
3wc -l <<<$(ps -fe)

See also: Here document