pbcopy, no cat

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

To paraphrase, the bad version creates a file called pbcopy:

$ cat .envrc › pbcopy

While the good version sends the file to your clipboard:

cat .envrc | pbcopy

There’s a third approach that avoids cat entirely, and may sidestep this mistake for some:

pbcopy < .envrc