by the way, the method of keeping the brake housing from squishing, while cutting it with a cable cutter is to hold the housing in place and as straight as you can. It only squishes into an unusable shape when you allow it to bend under the force of cutting.
Still, not as clean as getting grinded, but it's good enough.
While this probably works well with good cable cutters, as a user of a crappy Performance cutter, I get far better results when bending the housing at the point I want to cut. This spreads the coils on the housing, which means I only end up cutting one piece of the coil, and though it creates a burr, it's far easier to clean and file than when cutting straight across. With the Shimano cutters I used in the shop I worked at, this was not something I had to worry about. YMMV.