Comment by figmert

I totally agree, it did take me a while to come to terms with the syntax of assigning variables specifically due to that pipe at the end. I guess sometimes we just have to know the quirks of the relevant tooling we use. I used to use PHP heavily in the 4 and 5 days, and kinda got used to all the quirks it had. So during reviews, I would pick up a lot of issues some of my colleagues did not.

Interestingly some things do use a semicolon in jq, specifically while, until, reduce and some others I can't remember right now.