Pretty-Printing JSON in a Shell Script

Introduction

Pretty-printing JSON in a shell script is a great way to make your output more readable and easier to understand. It can also help you debug your code more quickly and accurately. In this article, we’ll look at how to pretty-print JSON in a shell script using the jq command-line tool.

Using jq to Pretty-Print JSON

The jq command-line tool is a powerful tool for manipulating JSON data. It can be used to pretty-print JSON data in a shell script. To use jq, you need to install it on your system. You can download it from: https://stedolan.github.io/jq/download/ or use package manager to install (homebrew, apt…)

Once installed, you can use the jq command to pretty-print JSON data in a shell script. For example, if you have a JSON file called data.json, you can pretty-print it using the following command:

jq . data.json

This will output the JSON data in a more readable format. You can also use the -C option to colorize the output. For example:

jq -C . data.json

This will output the JSON data in a more readable format with colors. You can also use the -M option to output the data in a more compact format. For example:

jq -M . data.json

This will output the JSON data in a more compact format. You can also use the -s option to sort the output. For example:

jq -s . data.json

This will output the JSON data in a sorted format. You can also use the -r option to output the data in a raw format. For example:

jq -r . data.json

This will output the JSON data in a raw format. You can also use the -f option to filter the output. For example:

jq -f filter.json data.json

This will output the JSON data filtered by the filter.json file. You can also use the -n option to output the data in a newline-delimited format. For example:

jq -n . data.json

This will output the JSON data in a newline-delimited format. You can also use the -u option to output the data in an unformatted format. For example:

jq -u . data.json

This will output the JSON data in an unformatted format. You can also use the -t option to output the data in a tab-delimited format. For example:

jq -t . data.json

This will output the JSON data in a tab-delimited format. You can also use the -c option to output the data in a CSV format. For example:

jq -c . data.json

This will output the JSON data in a CSV format. You can also use the -p option to output the data in a pretty-printed format. For example:

jq -p . data.json

This will output the JSON data in a pretty-printed format.

Summary

Pretty-printing JSON in a shell script is a great way to make your output more readable and easier to understand. The jq command-line tool is a powerful tool for manipulating JSON data and can be used to pretty-print JSON data in a shell script. With jq, you can use the -C, -M, -s, -r, -f, -n, -u, -t, -c, and -p options to output the data in a variety of formats.