bashkit

Structured data#

Bashkit ships structured-data builtins for the formats scripts hit most often. jq and yq share one jq-compatible transformation engine; narrower helpers cover common CSV, JSON, and TOML operations. All read files or stdin.

Builtin Format Reach for it when
jq JSON You need real JSON transformation, filters, construction, reduction.
yq YAML / JSON You want the same jq expressions over YAML, conversion, or safe in-place updates.
json JSON You want a quick get / set / keys / length without jq syntax.
csv CSV Selecting columns, filtering rows, counting, sorting tabular data.
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

yq#

Use jq-style expressions over YAML or JSON. The jq Cargo feature enables it. YAML mapping keys are emitted in deterministic sorted order; source order, comments, styles, and anchors are not preserved. Custom tags, non-string keys, and non-finite numbers fail closed at the JSON-value boundary.

yq '.server.port' config.yml
yq '.items[] | select(.enabled) | .name' config.yml
yq -o=json -I=0 config.yml
yq -i '.server.port = 8080' config.yml

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=$(yq '.server.port' config.yml)
echo "starting on $port"

See also#