Suggested modification/extension of beep

[Cathey, Jim]

I would only like to point out that:

<music.txt awk -f converter | xargs beep

utilizes an entire extra process, which has vastly
more memory impact in a running system than 50 or so
bytes in an enhanced pipeline-sucking beep!  :-)

The boundaries of the multiple beep executions might
also exhibit time discontinuities as the fork/exec
occurs, and this was my main thought at suggesting
a stdin variation.  Xargs is going to slice based
on nothing to do with your original music data.

If the slices are big enough, additional memory pages
might be consumed by beep to hold the 'tune' as
an array of command-line arguments.

Philosophically, command-line arguments are fine
for modifying a noise that could be characterized
as a beep, but once you delve into the area of playing
'music' with the same tool this seems to be more
suited for using a pipe (or file) datastream directly.
The 'musicker' you get, the 'pipier' you need to be.
I see a place for both usages.

-- Jim