There's one final nugget in Mr Rob's ix script that I wanted to pick out. It's not earth shattering but still useful to have seen.

At the end of the script, the URL generated from the newly created ix.io pastebin is put into the X buffer (so that it can be pasted into other X applications). This is done via the xclip command, but xclip is not installed everywhere, so the ix script checks that it is available before trying to use it:

which xclip >/dev/null || exit 0
echo "$url" | xclip

This is a common pattern.

Because the use of xclip here is right at the end of the script (by design, most likely) it's possible to abort (|| exit 0) if xclip isn't there. I guess an alternative, if it was necessary to run it mid-script, would be something like this:

which xclip >/dev/null && echo "$url" | xclip

Anyway, worth knowing and having seen it, right?