Handling First-Class Lists in Shell Scripting: Solutions with jq and es Shell

It’s not a secret that most common shells don’t have first class lists.

As a more practical example of this, let’s implement split-by-double-dash, a function (or a program) that would return two lists: args that come before -- and ones that come after.

There are a couple of options for returning lists in shell scripting.

The challenge lies in efficiently managing lists in shell environments.