This is how I use jq to conditionally add an element to an array only if it doesn’t exist there already. In other words, add an element to an array only if it doesn’t create a duplicate in the array. This is particularly helpful when I’m scripting a JSON transformation and want to make it idempotent.
Show Git Commit Message without Indentation
Sometimes I want a Git commit message without the leading indentation added by “git show” (for example, if I want to copy it and paste it somewhere else). This command gives me this output.
Write Slack Posts in Markdown
By default, Slack provides you with a Formatting toolbar and a WYSIWYG editor. I’m a big fan of writing in Markdown rather than WYSIWYG and use it everywhere I can. Fortunately, I can configure Slack to write in Markdown (or more accurately Slack’s subset of Markdown).
Filter Meta in WordPress Gutenberg Block Editor
I work with WordPress sites that have lots of meta fields exposed through the REST API. Within Gutenberg, I’m often checking those values by querying the “meta” attribute in the data. Sometimes the larger number of meta fields makes it difficult to find the specific fields I’m interested in. To make my life easier, I’ve put together a code snippet that filters the keys in the meta object that is returned.
Vim Increment Number With Dash
In Neovim, I’m a big fan of CTRL-a to increment a number (and CTRL-x to decrement a number), however when I have dash before the number (e.g. “sprint-23”), this is interpreted as a negative number so incrementing the value
goes to 22 (because -22 is one greater than -23). We can fix this.
Turn Off a Specific Linter in Neovim Ale
I recently needed to disable one of the built-in linters in the ALE (Asynchronous Lint Engine) Vim plugin in my Neovim configuration. This is the line that disables the PHP linter “phpstan” in Neovim.
xargs: warning: options –max-args and –replace/-I/-i are mutually exclusive, ignoring previous –max-args value
This threw me for a loop so I’m writing this down to help others (and likely me in the future). I swear I’ve used “xargs” with both “-I” and “–max-args” in the past but now I’m getting this warning and things are behaving improperly. It turns out there are two version of xargs, (FreeBSD xargs and GNU xargs). FreeBSD xargs is installed on BSD systems (including MacOS) and GNU xargs is found on on Linux systems. This warning (and the incorrect result you also get) indicate you’re running GNU xargs.
Git Editor Roulette
A question came up about setting the Git editor to a bash function, which I could not figure out. I was, however, able to set the Git editor to a bash script. As a proof of concept, here is a bash script to randomly choose an editor (nano or vim) when using Git.
Git Squash Back To
Often in my work, I’ll create a number of commits before I craft my correct solution. Having these missteps in separate commits doesn’t provide any real value and adds noise so I’ll often squash these commits into a single commit. Historically, I’ve used a Git interactive rebase to do this but as I was reminded on Mastodon, it seems like there should be a quicker way, so I’ve created a Git alias, “git squashbackto”, to do this.
Mac Maximize Window with Alfred
One of the things that frustrates me about Apple Macs (macOS) is clicking the green sizing button in the upper-left hand corner makes a window full screen. I almost never want to go full screen. What I typically want is to maximize the window (fill up the entire area while leaving the toolbar visible). This can be done by holding down “Option” while you click the green button (but I find I mess that up often enough that I wanted another solution).