One of the advantages of this sort of DSL is that they're easy to share between languages. One needs one implementation of JSON path per programming language, a

One of the advantages of this sort of DSL is that they're easy to share between languages. One needs one implementation of JSON path per programming language, and then it's easy to, for example, iterate on the query in the REPL of a dynamic language, then copy it to a fast compiled language. Or share a query between the browser and the server. That sort of thing. Regex has similar advantages, if one sticks to the subset of regex which is commonly understood between languages: so less so, for that very reason. Another plus is the principle of least power. A JSON Path will halt, and it won't make syscalls. There are circumstances where that's useful.