4 ms·

The article says the berry window manager responds with a JSON string that can be handled by jq. Does anyone know the history of jq ?

Avicebron 4y ago
is this rhetorical? Edit: Benefit of the doubt, it's a command line json processor written in 2013 mostly in C.
- thrdbndndn 4y ago
  Wow, I don't know jq only existed since 2013. What do people use before that?
  - pluc 4y ago
    JSON was first standardized in 2013[1], so I guess nothing [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON#Standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON#Standards
    - skybrian 4y ago
      It was standardized fairly late. Before that it was a well-known informal standard and parsers existed for many languages. According to the Wayback machine, a web page with the JSON grammar was on Crockford's website in February 2003: https://web.archive.org/web/20030228034147/http://www.crockford.com/JSON/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20030228034147/http://www.crockf...
      - chc 4y ago
        As a demo of how long before it was standardized it was already popular, YAML was modified to be a superset of JSON in 2009.
        j-james 4y ago
        Unfortunately, almost a superset. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30052633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30052633
  - Avicebron 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure, well I've worked with someone who kept large text files collected from scraping the domains that are either confirmed or are suspected of directing malicious traffic, peddling malware, etc. these files are json formatted but compacted to the point that they aren't really human readable, since theyre generated automatically and stored in a way to prevent access to something dangerous. running a jq command against these files will allow the data to be displayed in a way that I can look at the information collected in these files and investigate Edit: i misread and thought you asked what people used it for
  - skybrian 4y ago
    Before that you'd write a script using your favorite scripting language and a JSON parser.
  - nickstinemates 4y ago
    gg=G in vim?
    - MobiusHorizons 4y ago
      It does much more than just pretty print, BTW. The q stands for query, and you can write relatively complex queries using it. It’s certainly not as powerful as sql, but very useful for manipulating json data from the cli (or bash scripts)
  - kelnos 4y ago
    I seem to remember piping into "python -mjson.tool". But that of course only does pretty-printing; you can't easily do any jsonpath-style transformations with that.
  - swatcoder 4y ago
    What do you mean, you just awk for the third curly bracket after the first square bracket after the eighth appearance of “items”, excluding the time it appears between four opening and closing curly brackets.
    - teaearlgraycold 4y ago
      Music to my ears
  - speed_spread 4y ago
    They only wrote JSON, never parsed it.
  - usr1106 4y ago
    Before jq people did not use much JSON. XML seemed like the answer for many years, but it was always heavy to use. With a good universal tool maybe XML would have been a better success. But I don't think there was anything comparable to jq.

Avicebron 4y ago

is this rhetorical? Edit: Benefit of the doubt, it's a command line json processor written in 2013 mostly in C.

thrdbndndn 4y ago
Wow, I don't know jq only existed since 2013. What do people use before that?
- pluc 4y ago
  JSON was first standardized in 2013[1], so I guess nothing [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON#Standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON#Standards
  - skybrian 4y ago
    It was standardized fairly late. Before that it was a well-known informal standard and parsers existed for many languages. According to the Wayback machine, a web page with the JSON grammar was on Crockford's website in February 2003: https://web.archive.org/web/20030228034147/http://www.crockford.com/JSON/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20030228034147/http://www.crockf...
    - chc 4y ago
      As a demo of how long before it was standardized it was already popular, YAML was modified to be a superset of JSON in 2009.
      - j-james 4y ago
        Unfortunately, almost a superset. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30052633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30052633
- Avicebron 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure, well I've worked with someone who kept large text files collected from scraping the domains that are either confirmed or are suspected of directing malicious traffic, peddling malware, etc. these files are json formatted but compacted to the point that they aren't really human readable, since theyre generated automatically and stored in a way to prevent access to something dangerous. running a jq command against these files will allow the data to be displayed in a way that I can look at the information collected in these files and investigate Edit: i misread and thought you asked what people used it for
- skybrian 4y ago
  Before that you'd write a script using your favorite scripting language and a JSON parser.
- nickstinemates 4y ago
  gg=G in vim?
  - MobiusHorizons 4y ago
    It does much more than just pretty print, BTW. The q stands for query, and you can write relatively complex queries using it. It’s certainly not as powerful as sql, but very useful for manipulating json data from the cli (or bash scripts)
- kelnos 4y ago
  I seem to remember piping into "python -mjson.tool". But that of course only does pretty-printing; you can't easily do any jsonpath-style transformations with that.
- swatcoder 4y ago
  What do you mean, you just awk for the third curly bracket after the first square bracket after the eighth appearance of “items”, excluding the time it appears between four opening and closing curly brackets.
  - teaearlgraycold 4y ago
    Music to my ears
- speed_spread 4y ago
  They only wrote JSON, never parsed it.
- usr1106 4y ago
  Before jq people did not use much JSON. XML seemed like the answer for many years, but it was always heavy to use. With a good universal tool maybe XML would have been a better success. But I don't think there was anything comparable to jq.