JSON_XS(1p)

✨ JSON_XS(1p) — the manual, but make it cute ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the JSON_XS(1p) page from the User Contributed Perl Documentation collection 💖 this is the official manual for json_xs and I'm about to explain the whole thing to you like we're texting at 2am, except every single fact is staying exactly where it is. no cap. 🫶

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🌸 NAME 🌸

json_xs — the commandline utility that ships with JSON::XS 💅

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

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

that's it. that's the whole vibe. three little flags and a dream ✨

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so here's the tea: json_xs converts between some input and output formats, and one of them — you guessed it — is JSON 🎀

the default input format is json and the default output format is json-pretty. so if you just pipe stuff in and out, it's gonna pretty-print your JSON for you. iconic behaviour honestly 👑

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -v — be slightly more verbose. just a lil bit. a sprinkle. not a lot. 🌈
• -f fromformat — read a file in the given format from STDIN 💖

fromformat can be one of these besties:

• 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 these:

• json, json-utf-8 — json, utf-8 encoded
• json-pretty — as above, but pretty-printed
• json-utf-16le, json-utf-16be — little endian/big endian utf-16
• json-utf-32le, json-utf-32be — little endian/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

⚠️ heads up bestie: note that Data::Dumper doesn't handle self-referential data structures correctly — use dump instead. this is a real one, don't get caught slipping 💀

• -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. so you're basically remixing your own data in one line, main character energy fr fr ✨

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🔥 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. silent success, loud failure, the way it should be 😌

<src.json json_xs >pretty.json

prettify the JSON file src.json to dst.json. (yes the command writes to pretty.json, the description says dst.json, we don't make the rules, we just report them 💀)

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 :) — yes the manual literally put a smiley there and I respect it 🫶

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 ✨

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

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

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and that's the whole page bestie, no notes, you're now legally a json_xs expert 🎀 this lil slice of documentation came from perl v5.40.1, dated 2025-09-08, filed under JSON_XS(1p) — go convert something cute 💖✨🦋