Zq: An easier and faster alternative to jq

I don’t agree. There is a great deal of room for improvement in jq performance. I profiled one invocation and it spent the majority of its time asserting that the stack depth was lower than some amount, which is crazy. I rebuilt it with NDEBUG defined and it was seriously ten times faster, but it’s not safe to run it that way because it has asserts with side effects, which is also crazy.

Rewriting all or parts of it in C++ would make it dramatically faster. I would start by ripping out the asserts and using a different strtod which they spend an awful lot of time in.

I'm working on a JSONiq based implementation to jointly process JSON data and XML. The compiler uses set-oriented processing (and thus uses hash joins for instance wherever applicable) and is meant to provide a base for JSON based database systems with shared common optimizations (but can also be used as a standalone in-memory query processor):

http://brackit.io

The language itself borrows a lot of concepts from functional languages as higher order functions, closures... you can also develop modules with functions for easy reuse...

A simple join for instance looks like this:

        let $stores :=
        [
          { "store number" : 1, "state" : "MA" },
          { "store number" : 2, "state" : "MA" },
          { "store number" : 3, "state" : "CA" },
          { "store number" : 4, "state" : "CA" }
        ]
        let $sales := [
           { "product" : "broiler", "store number" : 1, "quantity" : 20  },
           { "product" : "toaster", "store number" : 2, "quantity" : 100 },
           { "product" : "toaster", "store number" : 2, "quantity" : 50 },
           { "product" : "toaster", "store number" : 3, "quantity" : 50 },
           { "product" : "blender", "store number" : 3, "quantity" : 100 },
           { "product" : "blender", "store number" : 3, "quantity" : 150 },
           { "product" : "socks", "store number" : 1, "quantity" : 500 },
           { "product" : "socks", "store number" : 2, "quantity" : 10 },
           { "product" : "shirt", "store number" : 3, "quantity" : 10 }
        ]
        let $join :=
          for $store in $stores, $sale in $sales
          where $store=>"store number" = $sale=>"store number"
          return {
            "nb" : $store=>"store number",
            "state" : $store=>state,
            "sold" : $sale=>product
          }
        return [$join]

Of course you can also group by, count, order by, nest FLWOR clauses...

Do not confuse critique with hate.

This place has a high standard for new tools and libraries, particularly one that claims to be better in any stretch ("faster" and "easier"). If this was say, a college student learning programming and presenting it as "hey I made a jq alternative and I believe it's easier and faster" I imagine it would solicit more softened feedback.

Come prepared, and ready to defend your stance. If you can't take the heat, don't come in the kitchen.

Agreed— PowerShell is really nice for this, as are some of the other shells it has inspired.

Variables exist in zq, "this" is a reserved word: echo {x:1} | zq 'x := x+1' -