How do you propose zcat tell the difference between an uncompressed file and a corrupted compressed file? Or are you saying if it doesn’t recognize it as compressed, just dump the source file regardless? Because that could be annoying.
I have this vague memory of one of the CSIs showing a list of IP addresses with 4-digit octets… I get not wanting to risk using real IP addresses, but at least use 10.x.x.x or 192.168.x x
If you want to confuse people… I pronounce /etc as “ets”, but one of my coworkers recently called it “slash e t c” and I had to ask him to repeat it a couple times before I figured out what he meant…
Have you ever tried catching flies? Vinegar works better than honey, after all, flies eat shit.
What even is plain text anymore? If you mean ASCII, ok, but that leaves out a lot. Should it include a minimal utf-8 detector? Utf-16? The latest goofy encoding? Should zcat duplicate the functionality of file? Generally, unix-like commands do one thing, and do it well, combining multiple functions is frowned upon.