Why should piping be avoided in bash scripts?

Question

Most of the time I see someone suggesting using a pipe in a bash script there is someone pointing out not to use it and instead use only one command.

Example:

find $dir -name $pattern

instead of

ls $dir | grep $pattern

Is there another reason than look to avoid pipe?

Answer 1

There is nothing wrong with piping per se. What should be avoided is useless fork()ing, meaning that starting a process is a relatively time-consuming thing.

If something can be done in one process, that is usually better than using two processes for the same result.