what happens when blast is run with default query "-"?

Question

[chefarov]

I have seen cmdline blast been used like:

blastx -db my_blast_db_path -query - -evalue 1e-3 -outfmt 6 -max_target_seqs 1

What's the purpose running blastx without query? Does it do anything?

Answer 1

[Asaf]

It reads the query from stdin - from standard input meaning terminal or redirected input such as pipe "|" or input "<"