Incidentally, your jq example is a perfect illustration of Zawinski’s Law† in action: “jq 1.5 released, including new datetime, math, and regexp functions, try

Incidentally, your jq example is a perfect illustration of Zawinski’s Law† in action: “jq 1.5 released, including new datetime, math, and regexp functions, try/catch syntax, array and object destructuring, a streaming parser, and a module system” These big bloated behavioral silos that keep popping up on Unix are neither good nor accidental: they’re the symptom of a fundamental fault in the underlying host. Because when the most complex concept it is capable of communicating on clients’ behalf is “Ugg bang rock!”, it should come as no surprise when its clients all go “fuckit, I’ll just do it all myself”. And so it goes. -- † http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html