jq (programming language)

jq
Official jq logo
ParadigmsPurely functional, JSON-oriented processing, tacit
Designed byStephen Dolan
First appearedAugust 21, 2012 (2012-08-21)
Stable release
1.8.1  / 1 July 2025
Typing disciplinedynamic
Memory managementautomatic
Scopelexical
Implementation languageHaskell (original)
C (later)
PlatformCross-platform: ARM, x86-64
OSCross-platform: Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, Solaris
LicenseMIT
Websitejqlang.org
Major implementations
gojq, jaq, jqjq
Influenced by
sed

jq is a widely-used command-line utility and very high-level, functional, domain-specific programming language designed for processing JSON data. jq filters its input data to produce modified output in a manner similar to AWK or sed, but operates on JSON values, rather than lines. In jq, programs consist of filters that can be composed in pipelines that perform a variety of operations on their inputs.