[TUHS] Tech Sq elevator (Was: screen editors) [ really I think efficiency now ]

[Michael Parson]

On Sat, 18 Jan 2020, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> Michael Parson writes:
>> On Mon, 13 Jan 2020, Dan Cross wrote:
>>>
>>> [Resending as this got squashed a few days ago. Jon, sorry for the
>>> duplicate. Again.]
>>>
>>> On Sun, Jan 12, 2020 at 4:38 PM Jon Steinhart <jon at fourwinds.com> wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>>> Many people have claimed, incorrectly in my opinion, that this model
>>>> fails in the modern era because it only works on text data.  They
>>>> change the subject when I point out that ImageMagick works on binary
>>>> data.  And, there are now stream processing utilities for JSON data
>>>> and such that show that the UNIX model still works IF you understand
>>>> it and know how to use it.
>>>
>>>
>>> Certainly. I think you hit the nail on the head with the proviso
>>> that one must _understand_ the Unix model and how to use it. If one
>>> does so, it's very powerful indeed, and it really is applicable more
>>> often than not. But it is not a panacea (not that anyone suggested it
>>> is). As an example, how do I apply an unmodified `grep` to arbitrary
>>> JSON data (which may span more than one line)? Perhaps there is a way
>>> (I can imagine a 'record2line' program that consumes a single JSON
>>> object and emits it as a syntactically valid one-liner...) but I can
>>> also imagine all sorts of ways that might go wrong.
>>
>> And here, understanding the model is important, namely, grep is the
>> wrong tool for searching/parsing JSON output. Dealing with JSON from the
>> shell, you should use jq.  I've been dragged kicking and screaming into
>> dealing with JSON, and about all I can say about it is, I like it about
>> this >< much more than XML. :)
>>
>> --
>> Michael Parson
>> Pflugerville, TX
>> KF5LGQ
>
> Slight disagreement here.  I would say that grep is *a* a tool for JSON and
> that jq is *a better* one.

OK, yeah, I'll use grep to find what I'm looking for in the json output,
then fight with^W^Wuse jq to extract the info I'm looking for in the json
output.

> The UNIX model part of this is that jq is another tool in a toolbox
> and plays well with others.  What disturbs me about a lot of software
> (and my tractor) it when it does the equivalent of throwing a random
> metric bolt into something that's built from SAE hardware.
>
> Jon
>

-- 
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
KF5LGQ