JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data representation format that resembles JavaScript source and that is can be easily red by machines and edited by humans with some effort.
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight text-based data representation format. It coincides with JavaScript syntax. It aims at being both human-readable and machine-readable, although its readability for humans is hindered by excessive use of quotes and not enforcing indentation so hierarchical data structures are often not recognised as such.
Although a textual format, the complexities of free formatting make JSON difficult if not impossible to parse with awk
, sed
etc, unless severe formatting restrictions are imposed that are not part of the JSON specification. It is generally recommended to use a proper JSON parser to handle extraction and manipulation of JSON files, even if (currently) your
files are so restricted that line oriented tools might work.
Useful resources
commandline tools
- json_pp
- yaml (JSON is a subset of YAML 1.2)