Structured data

Beyond jq, Bashkit ships small builtins for the formats scripts hit most often: CSV, JSON, YAML, and TOML. They cover the common “pull a field out, filter, count” operations without reaching for a full query language, and they all read from a file argument or from stdin so they pipe naturally.

Builtin	Format	Reach for it when
jq	JSON	You need real JSON transformation — filters, construction, reduction.
json	JSON	You want a quick get / set / keys / length without jq syntax.
csv	CSV	Selecting columns, filtering rows, counting, sorting tabular data.
yaml	YAML	Reading a value out of a config file by dotted path.
tomlq	TOML	Reading a value out of Cargo.toml, pyproject.toml, etc.

csv

Subcommands: select, count, headers, filter, sort. Use -d for a custom delimiter and --no-header for headerless data.

csv select name,age data.csv      # project columns
csv filter age = 30 data.csv      # rows where age == 30
csv sort name data.csv            # sort by column
csv count data.csv                # row count
csv headers data.csv              # list column names
echo "alice,30" | csv --no-header count

json

A lighter alternative to jq for everyday access. Subcommands: get, set, keys, length, type, format, pretty.

echo '{"a":1}'     | json get .a       # 1
echo '{"a":1}'     | json set .b 2      # {"a":1,"b":2}
echo '{"a":1,"b":2}' | json keys        # a, b
echo '[1,2,3]'     | json length        # 3
echo '{"a":1}'     | json format        # pretty-print

yaml

Query YAML by dot-separated path. Subcommands: get, keys, length, type.

yaml get server.port config.yml
yaml keys config.yml
cat config.yml | yaml get server.port

tomlq

Query TOML by dot-separated path. -r emits raw (unquoted) string values.

tomlq server.port config.toml
tomlq -r dependencies.serde.version Cargo.toml
cat config.toml | tomlq server.port

Composing them

Because every builtin reads stdin, they pipe into each other and into the text tools:

# CSV → JSON-ish summary
csv select name,price products.csv | csv sort price

# Pull a value out of config, then use it
port=$(yaml get server.port config.yml)
echo "starting on $port"

See also

• jq builtin — the full JSON query engine, with its own compatibility reference.
• Compatibility — the complete builtin coverage matrix.
• Browse all builtins — every registered command.