Sure, it is not needed, we can always write things in a different way. As a matter of fact, with such an argument, hardly any improvement should be accepted.

Amy: It's a real word. I use it all the time (of course, I'm a linguist, and I allow the possibility that I picked it up from my linguist chums, though it doesn't seem particularly jargony to me). For me, "disprefer X" means something like "not choose X when other options are available". This is subtly different from "prefer anything over X", quite different from "not prefer X", and totally distinct from "dislike X" or "object to X".

public media 1.0 wasaccepted as important but rarely loved

This answer is one of various possible solutions for a "Bash function that accepts input from parameter or pipe" since the OP indicated [in a comment] that base64 was not the actual problem domain. As such, it makes no attempt to assure input is able to be directly read from a file.

I don't like the first syntax because then you have weird looking code due to all the leading whitespace, and you lose a lot of real estate.

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

Code explains what and how Documentation explains why.