macOS command-line tools you might not know about

`pbcopy` and `pbpaste` are one of my most-loved in the list.

Dealing with some minified json, switching to iTerm, doing `pbpaste | json_pp | pbcopy` and having a clean output is _so_ nice.

If I had a nickel for each `cat foo.json | jq | pbcopy`, I'd be a rich man :)

That's a useless use of cat. You can use `jq . foo.json | pbcopy` or `jq < foo.json | pbcopy`.

In what way do you see those alternatives as superior?

They avoid an unnecessary invocation of the cat executable.

Instead, they open a file descriptor and pass that.

Tiny difference but there you go.

To add, searching for “useless use of cat” will yield several results for those interested in learning more. Other examples include “useless use of echo” and “useless use of ls *”.