pbcopy, no cat

My friend Josh recently wrote about a common mistake using pbcopy, Apple’s pasteboard utility. ...

March 5, 2025

Print Last Exit Code

The exit code of a command in a Unix-based system is an important and easy-to-miss piece of data. It isn’t printed to standard out; you have to go looking for it. I find it useful to inspect this information when debugging or considering chaining unfamiliar commands. ...

October 21, 2022

Goodbye Shared Dotfiles

A lot of people start programming with shared dotfiles, copied from a team or online. I did. Maybe you’re ready to move on; how would you do that? ...

May 25, 2022

You Have New Mail

Here’s a familiar scenario: you open a new terminal, and before the prompt appears, you see the following. You have new mail. What’s going on here? ...

October 16, 2020

mgrim: Everything Updated All The Time

My current favorite command line alias is mgrim, composed of four other aliases. Here’s what it is, and what it does. ...

July 11, 2018