I think awk is mostly only used by the 40+ set. It really is great for line-at-a-time. But so often I have to do things that at least slightly cross a line. Imagine an awk that was designed for json, say.
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On a case by case basis the data can be made to work better with awk, often boiling down to a few things (including writing emacs keyboard macros or functions). One is that jq -c ...will put a sequence of json objects each on one line.
sep 2, 2025, 9:38 pm • 1 0 • view
But yeah, I don't use awk a lot anymore for json. Before json tools were very good I would do a simplistic conversion to xml and use xpath and then work from there. These days I often load json into postgresql and use that excellent toolset. Even that's probably only for the over 40's!
sep 2, 2025, 9:44 pm • 1 0 • view
It really frustrates me that I don't know a command pipeline remotely as well as I do the Unix shell for, say, json. I mean, it's fine, I fire up Racket and code away, but there's got to be a better way. I should probably learn jq and friends and quit my bellyaching.
sep 3, 2025, 12:05 am • 3 0 • view
I'm careful to say "I don't know" as opposed to the proper Internet way of speaking, which is to say "there doesn't exist". (-:
sep 3, 2025, 12:05 am • 2 0 • view
I still use sed and awk on the command line, but with JSON I just end up live coding everything with an editor connected Lisp REPL 🤷🏻♂️
sep 3, 2025, 9:08 am • 3 0 • view