@FaheemMitha It's basically the same as if you run any interpreted language like Perl or Python with an expression on the command line. The how is simply that the commands given as command-line argument are executed instead of a specific file containing commands.
@TeXnician OK, but usually with Perl or Python you have to use a flag to indicate you want that string to be executed, or evaluated, or whatever it's called.
And it's usually instead of a file, instead of with. With pdflatex etc. it seems that both can be used together.
@FaheemMitha You should read the manpage. It details everything. In a nutshell: file names do not start with backslash and the command argument passed to pdftex must start with a backslash to be interpreted. That's your flag.
Does anyone have a comment on tex.stackexchange.com/a/624008/3929. I vaguely recall that there might be a way to get this "extra" spacing on numbers to disappear.
@samcarter it was cool! Today I'll have fun of all the people on the Black Friday frenzy :D (it only slighty hinders my plans as I also want to do some shopping here...)
@DavidCarlisle -- Yes. Same here. But Wooster, as in Ohio, is pronounced the same as Worcester as in Massachusetts. (The "ch" in Dorchester is pronounced as in "chalk".)
@barbarabeeton In British English I don't think most people pronounce the 'shire' part in the name of the sauce. It's always been 'Worcester' sauce in my family.
@PauloCereda Nothing like a few linguists to spoil a perfectly good joke. :)
@AlanMunn -- That I know. But in at least this part of the US, the "shire" is pronounced, although often more like "sheer" (albeit unstressed) than @DavidCarlisle's "shur". (But there's definitely not a "ch" in either the spelling or pronunciation.)
@barbarabeeton In the spelling, no, in the pronunciation, maybe :D 'cache', 'louche', 'cartouche' etc. :D [The appropriate response to this message of course being, 'touché']
Nice animations that show that visualization of data is important. Maybe you enjoy that as much as I did. https://www.autodesk.com/research/publications/same-stats-different-graphs