Bash – An SQLite/STDIN Conundrum, Specific to AIX

I'm been playing around with SQlite at work, specifically with trying to get the sqlite3 command line tool to accept stdin instead of a file. Sounds easy enough, on linux you can execute a command like:

echo 'test' | sqlite3 test.db '.import /dev/stdin test'

unfortunately – our machines at work run AIX (5 & 6) and as far as I can tell, there is no equivalent to the virtual file /dev/stdin. I managed to hack together an equivalent command that works on AIX using a temporary file.

echo 'test' | cat - > /tmp/blah ; sqlite3 test.db '.import /tmp/blah test' ; rm /tmp/blah

Now, does it need to use STDIN? isn't this temporary file thing enough? Probably, but I was hoping someone with better unix-fu had a more elegant solution.

note: the data I would like to import is only provided via STDOUT, so that's what the echo 'test' command is all about.

Clarification – I only have control over commands on the Right Hand Side of the pipe shown above. The data is being processed, and then passed to my command via stdin/stdout. the echo 'test' command is illustrative only.