I love this, from a comment on the article:

  He had in his path a script called `\#` that he used to comment out pipe elements like `mycmd1 | \# mycmd2 | mycmd3`. This was how the script was written:
 
  ```
  #!/bin/sh
  cat
  ```

▲ rgrau 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A similar trick:

    #!/bin/sh
    $*

that's my `~/bin/noglob` file, so when I call a zsh script from bash that uses `noglob`, it doesn't blow up.

▲ mzs an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wow I hate* that. I use bracket comments. They're cool cause they are bracket comments, so I use it in scripts to document pipelines. They are annoying cause they are bracket comments, in an interactive shell I have to type more and in TWO places. It's fun to reason-out how it works ;)

  $ echo foo | tr fo FO | sed 's/FOO/BAR/'
  BAR
  $ echo foo | ${IFS# tr fo FO | } sed 's/FOO/BAR/'
  foo

It's nice to have a way to both /* ... */ and // ... in shell scripts though:

  foo \
  | bar ${IFS Do the bar. Do it. } \
  | baz

* in the best possible way, like it's awful - I hate I didn't think of that

	▲	rgrau 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		for multiline pipes, it's WAY better to format like `foo \| bar \| baz` You don't have to use backquotes, AND, it allows you to comment line by line, because there's no backslash messing with the parser. I also use a last `\|\ncat` so you can delete any line and you don't have to worry about the last line being a bit different than the rest I created a list of similar tricks in https://github.com/kidd/scripting-field-guide in case anyone wants to take a look

▲ internet_points 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes! That one's going in my $PATH. Such a useful use of cat!

▲ 000ooo000 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What does it provide over

mycmd1 #| mycmd2

▲ chriswarbo 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Theirs "turns off" one element of a pipeline; yours turns off everything after a certain point.

This will output the stdout of mycmd1:

    mycmd1 #| mycmd2 | mycmd3

This will output the stdout of mycmd3:

    mycmd1 | \# mycmd2 | mycmd3

▲

mkoryak 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Can you explain to me why either of these is useful?

I've somehow gotten by never really needing to pipe any commands in the terminal, probably because I mostly do frontend dev and use the term for starting the server and running prodaccess

	▲	chriswarbo 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Pipelines are usually built up step by step: we run some vague, general thing (e.g. a `find` command); the output looks sort of right, but needs to be narrowed down or processed further, so we press Up to get the previous command back, and add a pipe to the end. We run that, then add something else; and so on. Now let's say the output looks wrong; e.g. we get nothing out. Weird, the previous command looked right, and it doesn't seem to be a problem with the filter we just put on the end. Maybe the filter we added part-way-through was discarding too much, so that the things we actually wanted weren't reaching the later stages; we didn't notice, because everything was being drowned-out by irrelevant stuff that that our latest filter has just gotten rid of. Tricks like this `\#` let us turn off that earlier filter, without affecting anything else, so we can see if it was causing the problem as we suspect. As for more general "why use CLI?", that's been debated for decades already; if you care to look it up :-)
	▲	agons 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I can imagine a pipeline where intermediate stages have been inserted to have some side effect, like debug logging all data passing through.