JSON_XS(1)

🌸 json_xs — JSON::XS commandline utility 🌸

(JSON_XS(1), from the User Contributed Perl Documentation) — okay so bestie, welcome to the manual page that’s all about converting formats and being lowkey iconic ✨

✨ NAME ✨

json_xs — the JSON::XS commandline utility. short, sweet, slay 💅

🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

json_xs [-v] [-f inputformat] [-t outputformat]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

json_xs converts between some input and output formats (one of them is JSON). lowkey magic, highkey useful 🫶

The default input format is json and the default output format is json-pretty. so if you just pipe stuff in, it’ll pretty-print JSON back at you, no cap ✨

💖 OPTIONS 💖

• -v — Be slightly more verbose. just a lil extra chat, you know? 👀
• -f fromformat — Read a file in the given format from STDIN.

fromformat can be one of:

• json — a json text encoded, either utf-8, utf16-be/le, utf32-be/le
• cbor — CBOR (RFC 7049, CBOR::XS), a kind of binary JSON
• storable — a Storable frozen value
• storable-file — a Storable file (Storable has two incompatible formats)
• bencode — use Convert::Bencode, if available (used by torrent files, among others)
• clzf — Compress::LZF format (requires that module to be installed)
• eval — evaluate the given code as (non-utf-8) Perl, basically the reverse of -t dump
• yaml — YAML format (requires that module to be installed)
• string — do not attempt to decode the file data
• none — nothing is read, creates an undef scalar - mainly useful with -e

• -t toformat — Write the file in the given format to STDOUT.

toformat can be one of:

• json — json, utf-8 encoded
• json-utf-8 — json, utf-8 encoded
• json-pretty — as above, but pretty-printed
• json-utf-16le — little endian utf-16
• json-utf-16be — big endian utf-16
• json-utf-32le — little endian utf-32
• json-utf-32be — big endian utf-32
• cbor — CBOR (RFC 7049, CBOR::XS), a kind of binary JSON
• cbor-packed — CBOR using extensions to make it smaller
• storable — a Storable frozen value in network format
• storable-file — a Storable file in network format (Storable has two incompatible formats)
• bencode — use Convert::Bencode, if available (used by torrent files, among others)
• clzf — Compress::LZF format
• yaml — YAML::XS format
• dump — Data::Dump
• dumper — Data::Dumper
• string — writes the data out as if it were a string
• none — nothing gets written, mainly useful together with -e

⚠️ Note that Data::Dumper doesn't handle self-referential data structures correctly - use dump instead.

• -e code — Evaluate perl code after reading the data and before writing it out again - can be used to filter, create or extract data. The data that has been written is in $_, and whatever is in there is written out afterwards. literally a whole little Perl hook, bestie 🧚

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

json_xs -t none <isitreally.json

“JSON Lint” — tries to parse the file isitreally.json as JSON — if it is valid JSON, the command outputs nothing, otherwise it will print an error message and exit with non-zero exit status. cute lil validator, iconic 🔥

<src.json json_xs >pretty.json

Prettify the JSON file src.json to dst.json. 💖

json_xs -f storable-file <file

Read the serialised Storable file file and print a human-readable JSON version of it to STDOUT. 🫶

json_xs -f storable-file -t yaml <file

Same as above, but write YAML instead (not using JSON at all :) 🌸

json_xs -f none -e '$_ = [1, 2, 3]'

Dump the perl array as UTF-8 encoded JSON text. ✨

<torrentfile json_xs -f bencode -e '$_ = join "\n", map @$_, @{$_->{"announce-list"}}' -t string

Print the tracker list inside a torrent file. 🏴‍☠️

lwp-request http://cpantesters.perl.org/show/JSON-XS.json | json_xs

Fetch the cpan-testers result summary "JSON::XS" and pretty-print it. 💖

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Copyright (C) 2008 Marc Lehmann <json@schmorp.de>

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and that’s the whole JSON_XS(1) moment, bestie: brought to you by perl v5.32.1, dated 2025-09-15, and signed with JSON_XS(1) energy 💅✨