[bsdetector]

JSON is not immediately usable by and is cumbersome to parse correctly in a shell.

A simple line-based shell variable name=value format works unreasonably well. For example:

    # ls --shell-var ./thefile
    dir="/home/user" file="thefile" size=1234 ...
    # eval $(ls --shell-var ./thefile); echo $size
    1234

If this had been in shells and cmdline tools since the beginning it would have saved so much work, and the security problems could have been dealt with by an eval that only set variables, adding a prefix/scope to variables, and so on.

Unfortunately it's too late for this and today you'll be using a pipeline to make the json output shell friendly or use some substring hacks that probably work most of the time.

[starttoaster]

That's great for key=value data, but more complex data structures don't work so well in that format, JSON does. "Why would you need to represent data as a complex data structure?" Sometimes attributes are owned by a specific entity, and that entity might own multiple attributes. It might even own other sub-entities. JSON represents that. Key=value does not.

[bsdetector]

JSON is literally key=value, just nested. Which you can do with shell variables.

The question was "What's not to like [about JSON output from cmdline tools]?" and the answer is that it's cumbersome to read in a shell and all but requires another pipeline stage.

I didn't even recommend shell variable output and made it clear this isn't today a reasonable solution so I'm not sure where this hostility in the replies comes from, but I assume from recognition that it's a more practical solution to reading data within a shell but not wanting that to be so.

[kitd]

That's not your original request though, to use line-based data. It seems you're determined not to use jq but if anything, json output | jq is more the unix way than piping everything through shell vars.

[bsdetector]

> That's not your original request though, to use line-based data.

It wasn't my request and OP (not me) said "line-based data" is best. The comment I replied to said "Newline-delimited JSON ... a line-based format".

If the only objection you have is "but that's line-based!" then you're in a completely different conversation.

> if anything, json output | jq is more the unix way than piping everything through shell vars.

The unix way is line-based. The comment I replied to is talking about line-based output. Line-based output is the only structure for data universal to unix cmdline tools - even tab/space isn't universal; sending structured non-line-delimited data to a program to unpack it is the least unix-like way to do it.

Also there's no pipe in the shell-variable output scheme I described, whereas "json | jq" is a shell pipeline.

[mlhpdx]

And, the author isn’t suggesting only having JSON output, but adding it as an option for those of use that would make use of it. The plain text should remain as well (and has to or many, many things would break).

On a separate point, I find the JSON much easier to reason about. The wall of text output doesn’t work for my brain - I just can’t see it all. Structuring/nesting with clear delineations makes it far easier for me to grok.

[simonw]

I use jq - which ChatGPT knows inside out, so I can generally get exactly what I want from it with a single prompt.