Then pipe it into jq [1] to query parameters or build up a formatted string.
Or pipe it into rq [2] to convert the format to yaml, toml etc.
[1]: https://stedolan.github.io/jq/tutorial/
[2]: https://github.com/dflemstr/rq#format-support-status
In JC – JSONifies the output of many CLI toolsdflemstr
rq
Rust2016–2022
dflemstr / rq
rq
Record Query - A tool for doing record analysis and transformation
20Distinct people
25Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
2.3KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Record Query - A tool for doing record analysis and transformation
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- antonmedv/fx · linked in 2 of the same discussions
- borkdude/jet · linked in 2 of the same discussions
- cube2222/jql · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:03:16 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year25 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2016-08-31 17:16:08 UTC to 2022-11-03 08:48:10 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 2 | 4 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 1 | 7 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
rq
NOTE: rq is in very low maintenance mode as my day job is taking up
a lot of my time. I will try my best to merge pull requests but will
not drive active development of this crate.
NOTE: rq no longer ships with query support and a Javascript
engine is not included; instead, it focuses exclusively on format
transformation. You can still pipe into a runtime like node.js if
you need Javascript evaluation. Please see this issue
to discuss introducing a new query language.
This is the home of the tool called rq (record query). It's a tool
that's used for performing queries on streams of records in various
formats.
The goal is to make ad-hoc exploration of data sets easy without
having to use more heavy-weight tools like SQL/MapReduce/custom
programs. rq fills a similar niche as tools like awk or sed,
but works with structured (record) data instead of text.
It was created with love out of the best parts of Rust, and is
distributed as a dependency-free binary on many operating systems and
architectures.
Quick links
Installation — How to install rq.
Tutorial — Learn rq from scratch.
Protobuf — Configure Protobuf specifics.
Development — Contribute to rq.
Format support status
Format
Read
Write
Apache Avro
✔️
✔️
CBOR
✔️
✔️
JSON
✔️
✔️
MessagePack
✔️
✔️
Google Protocol Buffers
✔️
✖️
YAML
✔️
✔️
TOML
✔️
✔️
Raw (plain text)
✔️
✔️
CSV
✔️
✔️
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
25 sourcesNot sure what it is doing more...I'm referring to this rq: https://github.com/dflemstr/rq#format-support-status
It converts to/from the listed formats.
There is also `jc` (written in Python) with the added benefit that it converts output of many common unix utilities to json. So you would not need to parse `ip` for example.
https://github.com/kellyjonbrazil/jc#parsers
In Shell script best practices, from a decade of scripting thingsProbably this: https://github.com/dflemstr/rq
In Show HN: Tombl – Easily query .toml files from bashrq: Universal convertor between structured data (JSON, MessagePack, CBOR, etc.)
48 points · Open discussionI think the joke was that it already exists.
https://github.com/dflemstr/rq
In Show HN: gq – like jq or zq, but you use GoI'm surprised no one mentioned rq [1] yet. It's come up before in older HN threads [2] whenever the discussion on jq comes up...
[1] https://github.com/dflemstr/rq
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13090604
In Zq: An easier and faster alternative to jqThanks!
Also see rq: https://github.com/dflemstr/rq
In Show HN: utt – Universal Text TransformerI also like https://github.com/dflemstr/rq because it supports a few more formats (protobufs for example)
In FX: An interactive alternative to jq to process JSONStepping just a little beyond regular ‘loop and filter’ is already difficult without consulting the manual each time — being exacerbated by the impossibility of finding those things in the manual without skimming through most of it. Making an ‘if’ for variations in the input structure is easily a twenty-minute job. Outside of the basic features, Jq's syntax is increasingly arcane and unintuitive—maybe those working with it daily do remember the ‘advanced’ stuff, but I don't.
I actually collected a sizable list of alternatives to Jq:
https://github.com/TomConlin/json2xpath
https://github.com/antonmedv/fx
https://github.com/simeji/jid
https://github.com/jmespath/jp
https://jsonnet.org
https://github.com/borkdude/jet
https://github.com/jzelinskie/faq
https://github.com/dflemstr/rq
https://github.com/mgdm/htmlq
And there's someone else's list
Read the rest
of stuff around Jq: https://github.com/fiatjaf/awesome-jq
However, personally I think that next time I might instead fire up Hy, and use the regular syntax with the functional approach for any convoluted processing I come up with. Last time I mentioned this, another HNer made a Jq-like tool with Lisp-like syntax: https://github.com/cube2222/jql (from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21981158).
There's also rq (record query)[1] that also supports CSV and JSON but not TSV though. It's written in Rust.
[1] https://github.com/dflemstr/rq
In Miller CLI – Like Awk, sed, cut, join, and sort for CSV, TSV and JSONFor everyone pining for a Jq with a different syntax: I have a bunch of links to alternatives collected, you might want to try some of them (some may be for different things than JSON):
https://github.com/fiatjaf/awesome-jq
https://github.com/TomConlin/json2xpath
https://github.com/antonmedv/fx
https://github.com/fiatjaf/jiq
https://github.com/simeji/jid
https://github.com/jmespath/jp
https://github.com/cube2222/jql
https://jsonnet.org
https://github.com/borkdude/jet
https://github.com/jzelinskie/faq
https://github.com/dflemstr/rq
Personally I think that next time I might just fire up Hy and use its functional capabilities.
In Q: A faster re-implementaiton of jq written in Reason Native/OCamlThere is more universal alternative to jq that supports also protobuf, msgpack, cbor, etc - rq[1].
[1] https://github.com/dflemstr/rq
In Show HN: jql – Easier jq Alternative with a Lispy Syntax Written in GoThis is a really slick little utility! I'll definitely be adding it to my data munging grab bag.
For those that deal with this sort of thing often, here are some similarly useful tools:
⠀
Really useful for generating table definitions and/or importing data from a csv to a variety of databases (bunch of other useful utilities in the repo as well): https://csvkit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/scripts/csvsql.html
Similar to cq for querying a CSV file directly: http://harelba.github.io/q/
Not used often, but really handy when you come across a csv file it's designed for: http://colin.maudry.com/csvtool-manual-page/
Diff csv files: http://paulfitz.github.io/daff/
Can convert flatfiles between a bunch of different formats. Useful blunt tool to get things to and from csv files (among others): https://github.com/dflemstr/rq
And for searching JSON:
jq:
Read the rest
https://stedolan.github.io/jq/
gron: https://github.com/tomnomnom/gron
Or use in2csv from csvkit or rq to get the JSON over to CSV and go from there.
https://github.com/dflemstr/rq
jq but supports avro, messagepack, protocol buffers, etc.
In TSV Utilities: Command line tools for large, tabular data filesRecord-query [1] embeds v8 for its query language, which seems to add a significant amount of heft. I know that couchdb uses js for querying as well. It seems like this could be another option for something like that.
[1] https://github.com/dflemstr/rq
In QuickJS JavaScript EngineShowing the 15 most recent of 25 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.