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jq-cli

A jq clone written in pure PHP on top of Laravel Zero. It implements the jq language with its own lexer, parser and generator-based interpreter — not field extraction with regexes — so stream semantics ([], ,, //, recurse, reduce, ...) behave like the real thing.

It is Windows-first: distributed as a PHAR plus .bat wrappers so jq finally works in CMD/PowerShell without installing the native binary, WSL, or fighting with the Git Bash PATH.

Why isn't jq found on Windows?

On Windows jq "is never found" for a stack of reasons:

• It is not installed by default and is not part of Windows.
• Even when present in a Git Bash / MSYS environment, that binary lives under C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin and is not on the PowerShell/CMD PATH.
• WSL has its own jq, but it is invisible to native Windows shells.
• Copy-pasted examples from the internet use single quotes (jq '.foo'), which CMD and PowerShell do not treat as quotes, so the filter breaks even when a jq is found.

jq-cli fixes this by being self-contained: given a PHP runtime, the jq.bat wrapper runs a PHAR that interprets the jq language directly. No native jq, no WSL, no Git Bash PATH surgery.

Quoting on Windows: in CMD use double quotes and escape inner quotes as \". In PowerShell use double quotes or single quotes. The examples below use double quotes so they work in CMD. For complex programs, put the filter in a file and use -f program.jq.

Installation

Requirements

• PHP 8.2+ on the PATH (8.4 recommended). Install with:

  or via Scoop: scoop install php.

Option A — Composer (recommended)

Make sure Composer's global bin directory is on your PATH:

• Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Composer\vendor\bin
• Linux/macOS: ~/.composer/vendor/bin or ~/.config/composer/vendor/bin

Then the jq command is available everywhere:

Option B — Standalone PHAR (Windows, no Composer)

1. Build the PHAR (see Building) or grab jq.phar from the releases page.
2. Copy jq.phar and jq.bat into a folder, e.g. %USERPROFILE%\bin.

3. Add that folder to your user PATH:

4. Reopen your terminal so the new PATH takes effect.

Now jq works from CMD and PowerShell.

Usage

If no files are given, input is read from STDIN. Multiple concatenated JSON documents and NDJSON are both supported.

Options

Short flags can be combined: jq -rc ".[]".

Exit codes (jq parity)

Language coverage

• Paths: ., .., .foo, .foo.bar, .["foo"], .[0], .[], .[1:3], optional ?, chaining.
• Construction: arrays [...], objects {a: .x, "b": 1, $v, (expr): val, user}, string interpolation "\(.x)".
• Flow: |, ,, //, if/then/elif/else/end, try/catch, ?, reduce, foreach, label $x | ... break $x.
• Binding & destructuring: . as $x, . as [$a,$b], . as {a:$a}, with ?// alternatives.
• Arithmetic & comparison: + - * / % with jq's overloads (array/string/ object), == != < <= > >=, and or not, total ordering across types.
• Functions: def f: ...;, def f(a;b): ...;, value params def f($a):, recursion, filters as arguments.
• Builtins: length, keys, map, select, recurse, to_entries, from_entries, with_entries, add, range, sort, sort_by, group_by, unique(_by), min(_by), max(_by), flatten, paths, getpath, setpath, delpaths, del, path, test, match, capture, scan, sub, gsub, math functions, dates, and more.
• Formats: @base64, @base64d, @json, @text, @csv, @tsv, @html, @uri, @sh.
• Update operators: =, |=, +=, -=, *=, /=, %=, //=, built on path expressions.
• I/O: concatenated JSON, NDJSON, --slurp, --raw-input, input/inputs, $ENV/env, $ARGS, $__loc__.

Architecture

• app/Jq/Lexer — tokenizer (Lexer, Token, TokenType).
• app/Jq/Parser — precedence-climbing Parser and the Ast node classes.
• app/Jq/Runtime — generator-based Interpreter, Environment, Builtins (native) + Prelude (jq-defined builtins), Paths, Values, Operators.
• app/Jq/Io — JsonStreamReader, OutputEncoder.
• app/Jq/Cli — ArgvParser, CliConfig, Runner.
• app/Jq/Engine.php — wires it all together and computes exit codes.

Every expression evaluates to a PHP \Generator, so a filter can emit zero, one or many values — the core requirement for honest jq semantics.

Development

Building

The Laravel Zero app:build command uses Box, whose temp-directory cleanup is unreliable on Windows. A dependency-free builder is included:

This produces builds/jq.phar. For a much smaller binary, install runtime-only dependencies first:

The builds/jq.bat wrapper simply calls php jq.phar %*.

Compatibility & known divergences

This is a faithful but not byte-identical reimplementation. Known differences from reference jq:

• Numbers: values are PHP int/float. Integer-valued floats print without a trailing .0 (e.g. 2.0 → 2). Very large integers may lose precision (IEEE-754 double), matching jq's own number model in most cases.
• Object keys that are numeric strings (e.g. {"0":1}) may be normalised by PHP's array key casting.
• Regex uses PCRE (PHP) rather than Oniguruma; the vast majority of patterns and flags (g, i, x, s, m) behave identically, but exotic Oniguruma features may differ.
• @sh/dates cover the common cases; some locale-specific strftime specifiers are simplified.
• --stream and SQL-style builtins are not yet implemented.

Found a divergence? Open an issue — golden tests live in tests/Feature.

License

MIT © Jefferson Goncalves