I'm having trouble finding a name for the - character in the context of a piped bash command.

1. What is the - character called?
2. Can I replace it with something more readable for a script?

Example command:

echo -n e "my command" | socat - /dev/somefile

I'm having trouble finding a name for the - character in the context of a piped bash command.

1. What is the - character called?
2. Can I replace it with something more readable for a script?

Example command:

echo -ne "my command" | socat - /dev/somefile