Pipe operator (| in shell) makes codes more concise and easy to read.

R Ecosystem

Pipe operator for R is %>% defined in package magrittr:

library(dplyr)
probes <- 'probes.csv' %>%
  read.table(header = FALSE, sep = ',',
                     col.names = c('poinitID', 'fullDesc', 'remark'),
                     colClasses = c('integer', 'character', 'integer')) %>%
  filter(remark==0)

See magrittr: Simplifying R code with pipes for detailed explanations and examples.

The rules are simple: the object on the left hand side is passed as the first argument to the function on the right hand side. So:

my.data %>% my.function is the same as my.function(my.data)

my.data %>% my.function(arg=value) is the same as my.function(my.data, arg=value)

For functions with only 1 parameter, there's no need to write parenthesis.

Python Family

Pipe operator for Coconut is |>: "hello, world!" |> print

BTW: Elixir use the same operator for pipeline.

With Toolz package:

from toolz import pipe
pipe(12, sqrt, str)

Pandas also has a pipe() method for dataframe object. See Functional pipes in python like %>% from R's dplyr for more details.

Lisp Family

Pipe operator for Hy and Clojure is ->:

=> (defn output [a b] (print a b))
=> (-> (+ 4 6) (output 5))
10 5

Haskell

In Haskell the dot operator . plays the similar role through Function composition:

reverse . sort is equivalent to \x -> reverse (sort x).