how a stray "j" ruined my evening
Summary
A developer shares a CLI automation tale about a trailing newline turning the last character of a shortened URL into a 'j', causing 404s for some recipients. The root cause was how ANSI newline handling interacts with URL strings, and the fix was to avoid trailing newlines or use jq's --join-output to suppress extra newline output. The post also highlights small CLI pitfalls and practical fixes relevant to automation workflows.