the difference between method chaining and the pipe operator is that method chaining normally only works on methods that are supported by the object being returned, whereas the pipe operator works on any function that can take that object as input. in other words the pipe operator is a lot more flexible and doesn't require me to patch the objects class in order to add support for the function i want to call with it. method chaining syntax works in rubish because it either defines or pretends that all unix commands are methods of some class that represents the output of a command.