[SOLVED] JQ issues with comments on Json file

JQ issues with comments on Json file

I'm using JQ https://stedolan.github.io/jq/ to work in bash with my json and when I read the json is throwing me an error

   parse error: Invalid numeric literal at line 2, column 5=

Since my json has some comments

  // comment
  "spawn": {}

I've been seen looking the options and I cannot find any option to fix the problem. Any idea how to solve it?

Solution

JSON and thus jq do not support comments (in the usual sense) in JSON input. The jq FAQ lists a number of tools that can be used to remove comments, including jsonlint, json5, and any-json. I'd recommend one that can act as a filter.

For NDJSON with #-style comments on separate lines, you could use jq by filtering out the #-style comments as follows:

jq -Rcn '
  def iterate(f): def r: f | (., r); r;
  iterate(try (inputs|fromjson) catch infinite)
  | select(isinfinite|not)'

(This also works with gojq and jaq, the Go and Rust implementation of jq.)

See https://github.com/stedolan/jq/wiki/FAQ#processing-not-quite-valid-json for links and further details.
——

It might be worth pointing out that jq can be used to process JSON with #-style comments, at least if the JSON is not too large to be processed as a jq program. For example, you could use jq with the -f option to read a JSON file as a jq program.