21–29 of 29 posts
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libxo is doing a good job for FreeBSD. It would be nice if Linux also adapts that, or something similar, one day. Eg I have a script that needs output from netstat, and `netstat -bin --libxo json | jq ...` is a great way to get that info instead of scraping the human-readable output.
Sorry, stupid question, but why not use /proc/net directly?
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It's nice but I don't think json is such a great format for it. The overhead of parsing it is incredibly annoying along with being unable to pack binary data which is what unix tools can deal with to some extent
i have 2 letters for you: jq any tool that outputs json + jq => instant scriptability win.
When walking JSON structures to validate data I code each validation separately instead of burying them in blocks of if-then-else logic. I think this makes it easier to maintain and more obvious when dealing with data that for example may be in a list or an array of lists.
But yeah if you write golang scripts and want to shuffle data in and out of bash, jq is your #1 power tool.
I think if all command line tools outputted JSON, it would go a long way towards fixing the "ad-hoc parser problem" in scripts, and bring unixy shells around to a more PowerShell-like object-passing style. Passing plain text around is a great idea, but It's silly to restrict yourself to a single structural unit within that text (the "line"). We have better tech now.
It's not the answer for everything, it's just one of the tools. It feels cosy to huge amount of people because it's the product of web explosion, but at the core it's accidental and not that good.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's nice but I don't think json is such a great format for it. The overhead of parsing it is incredibly annoying along with being unable to pack binary data which is what unix tools can deal with to some extent
i have 2 letters for you: jq any tool that outputs json + jq => instant scriptability win.
I think if all command line tools outputted JSON, it would go a long way towards fixing the "ad-hoc parser problem" in scripts, and bring unixy shells around to a more PowerShell-like object-passing style. Passing plain text around is a great idea, but It's silly to restrict yourself to a single structural unit within that text (the "line"). We have better tech now.
Maybe a good interim solution would be a “proxy command” that knows the output format of common commands, and how to convert them to json. So for example you could pipe the output of ls to this tool, and it would be smart enough to parse it and convert to json.
I think if all command line tools outputted JSON, it would go a long way towards fixing the "ad-hoc parser problem" in scripts, and bring unixy shells around to a more PowerShell-like object-passing style. Passing plain text around is a great idea, but It's silly to restrict yourself to a single structural unit within that text (the "line"). We have better tech now.
libxo is doing a good job for FreeBSD. It would be nice if Linux also adapts that, or something similar, one day. Eg I have a script that needs output from netstat, and `netstat -bin --libxo json | jq ...` is a great way to get that info instead of scraping the human-readable output.
FYI, `jc netstat` also generates JSON output for `netstat`.
(disclosure: I'm the author of `jc`)
While I'm at it... check out `jtbl` on my github which prints the JSON or JSON Lines output to a table in your terminal.
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Sorry, stupid question, but why not use /proc/net directly?
/proc is a linuxism.
Glad I don't have to support other OSes...