The original title is "jq in Shell Scripts: The Small Things That Trip You Up"

Short summary

A practical guide to jq edge cases in shell scripts, covering null handling with the // operator, array filtering with select(), and distinguishing empty arrays from null results. Includes defensive patterns like jq -e for exit-code-based null detection and wrapper checks for missing keys. Aimed at sysadmins and developers processing JSON in production pipelines.

• •Use jq's // operator to provide defaults for null or missing fields
• •Empty arrays from select() are not null — scripts must distinguish the two
• •jq -e returns exit code 5 for null output, enabling shell-level error handling

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