NAME

yq - Filter YAML through a command-line program

VERSION

version 0.044

SYNOPSIS

yq [-vx] <script> [<file>...]

yq -h|--help|--version

DESCRIPTION

This program takes a stream of YAML documents (on STDIN or file arguments), applies a filter, then writes the results to STDOUT.

ARGUMENTS

script

The script to run. For the script syntax, see SYNTAX.

<file>

A YAML file to filter. The special file "-" refers to STDIN. If no files are specified, filter STDIN.

OPTIONS

-v | --verbose

Set verbose mode to print out some internal program messages on STDERR to help with debugging.

-x | --xargs

xargs mode. When the filter returns only a single item, simply print it out without using the serializer. This allows single values to be piped into other programs that may not know how to deal with serialized data, like xargs.

-h | --help

Show this help document.

--version

Print the current yq and Perl versions.

SYNTAX

EXPRESSIONS

An EXPRESSION is allowed to be either a FILTER, VALUE, or a COMPARISON.

FILTERS

Filters select a portion of the incoming documents. Filters can be combined to reach deep inside the documents you're working with.

.

Returns the entire document, unfiltered. Useful in if/then statements.

# INPUT
foo: bar
baz: fuzz

$ yq .
foo: bar
baz: fuzz
.key

Extract a single item out of a hash.

# INPUT
foo:
    bar: baz
    fizz: fuzz

$ yq .foo
bar: baz
fizz: fuzz

$ yq .foo.fizz
fuzz
.[#]

Extract a single item out of an array.

# INPUT
- foo: fuzz
- bar: buzz
- baz:
    good: bad
    new: old

$ yq .[1]
bar: buzz

$ yq .[2]
baz:
    good: bad
    new: old

$ yq .[2].baz
good: bad
new: old

$ yq .[2].baz.new
old
[]

Use [] with no index to flatten an array.

# INPUT
- foo: fuzz
- bar: buzz

$ yq '.[]'
foo: fuzz
---
bar: buzz
$.

$. is the whole original document before any pipe operators changed what part of the document we're working with.

Assignment

Filters can be assigned new values. The new value can be another filter or any "VALUES".

# INPUT
foo: fuzz
bar: baz
---
foo: buzz
bar: taz

$ yq '.foo = 2'
foo: 2
bar: baz
---
foo: 2
bar: taz

Multiple assignments can be combined with |:

$ yq '.foo = .bar | .bar = "foo"'
foo: baz
bar: foo
---
foo: taz
bar: foo

VALUES

'STRING' "STRING"

Both single- and double-quoted strings are allowed. Using \ will escape the string delimiter.

{ KEY: EXPRESSION, ... }

The hash constructor. KEY may be any FILTER or a bare value.

# INPUT
foo: bar
baz: fuzz
---
foo: 1
baz: 2

$ yq '{ bar: .foo, .baz: foo }'
bar: bar
fuzz: foo
---
2: foo
bar: 1
[ EXPRESSION, ... ]

The array constructor.

# INPUT
foo: bar
baz: fuzz
---
foo: 1
baz: 2

$ yq '[ .foo, .baz ]'
- bar
- fuzz
---
- 1
- 2
empty

The special value empty suppresses printing of a document. Normally, an undefined document will show up in the output as "--- ~". If your filter instead yields empty, the document will not be printed at all.

This is especially useful in conditionals:

# INPUT
foo: bar
baz: fuzz

$ yq 'if .foo eq bar then . else empty'
foo: bar
baz: fuzz

$ yq 'if .foo eq buzz then . else empty'
$

... though see the grep() function for a shorter way of writing this.

Values

Any bareword that is not recognized as a syntax element is treated as a value. These barewords may only contain letters, numbers, and underscore.

NOTE: This may be subject to change to only allow quoted strings and bare numbers in a future version.

COMPARISONS

eq

String equals comparison. Returns true if both sides are equal to each other when treated as a string.

The two sides may be FILTERS or VALUES.

# INPUT
foo: bar
baz: fuzz
buzz: fuzz

$ yq '.foo eq bar'
true

$ yq '.baz eq .buzz'
true

$ yq '.baz eq bar'
false

YAML treats the string "true" as a true value, and the string "false" as a false value.

ne

String not equals comparison. Returns true if one side is not equal to the other side when compared as a string.

The two sides may be FILTERS or VALUES.

# INPUT
foo: bar
baz: fuzz
buzz: fuzz

$ yq '.foo eq bar'
true

$ yq '.baz eq .buzz'
true

$ yq '.baz eq bar'
false

YAML treats the string "true" as a true value, and the string "false" as a false value.

==

Numeric equals comparison. Returns true if both sides are equal to each other when treated as numbers. If one of the items is not a number, will print a warning to STDERR but try to compare anyway.

The two sides may be FILTERS or VALUES.

# INPUT
one: 1
two: 2
uno: 1

$ yq '.one == 1'
true

$ yq '.one == 2'
false

$ yq '.one == .uno'
true
!=

Numeric not equals comparison. Returns true if both sides are equal to each other when treated as numbers. If one of the items is not a number, will print a warning to STDERR but try to compare anyway.

The two sides may be FILTERS or VALUES.

# INPUT
one: 1
two: 2
uno: 1

$ yq '.two != 1'
true

$ yq '.two != 2'
false

$ yq '.one != .uno'
false
> / >=

Numeric greater-than (or equal-to) comparison. Returns true if the left side is greater than (or equal-to) the right side. If one of the items is not a number, will print a warning to STDERR but try to compare anyway.

The two sides may be FILTERS or VALUES.

# INPUT
one: 1
two: 2
uno: 1

$ yq '.two >= 1'
true

$ yq '.two > 2'
false

$ yq '.one >= .uno'
true
< / <=

Numeric less-than (or equal-to) comparison. Returns true if the left side is less than (or equal-to) the right side. If one of the items is not a number, will print a warning to STDERR but try to compare anyway.

The two sides may be FILTERS or VALUES.

# INPUT
one: 1
two: 2
uno: 1

$ yq '.two <= 1'
false

$ yq '.two < 2'
false

$ yq '.one <= .uno'
true

FUNCTIONS

length( EXPRESSION )

Returns the length of the thing returned by EXPRESSION. Depending on what type of thing that is:

string/number   - Returns the number of characters
array           - Returns the number of items
hash            - Returns the number of pairs

If EXPRESSION is missing, gives the length of the entire document (length(.)). Returns a number suitable for assignment.

Although length() takes an expression, certain constructs are redundant:

length( keys( EXPRESSION ) ) -> length( EXPRESSION )
# length() works on hashes

A future version may optimize these away, or warn you of their redundancy.

# INPUT
foo:
    one: 1
    two: onetwothreefourfive
    three: 3
baz: [ 3, 2, 1 ],

$ yq 'length(.)'
2

$ yq 'length'
2

$ yq 'length( .foo )'
3

$ yq 'length( .baz )'
3

$ yq 'length( .foo.two )'
19

$ yq '{ l: length( .foo.two ) }'
l: 19
keys( EXPRESSION )

Return the keys of the hash or the indicies of the array returned by EXPRESSION. If EXPRESSION is missing, gives the keys of the entire document (keys(.)).

Returns an array suitable for assignment.

# INPUT
foo:
    one: 1
    two: 2
    three: 3
baz: [ 3, 2, 1 ]

$ yq 'keys( .foo )'
- one
- two
- three

$ yq 'keys( .baz )'
- 0
- 1
- 2

$ yq 'keys( . )'
- foo
- baz

$ yq 'keys'
- foo
- baz

$ yq '{ k: keys( .foo ) }'
k:
    - one
    - two
    - three
each( EXPRESSION )

Return a list of key/value pairs for the hash or array given by EXPRESSION. If EXPRESSION is missing, gives the key/value pairs of the entire document (each(.)).

# INPUT
foo:
    one: 1
    two: 2
    three: 3
baz: [ 3, 2, 1 ]

$ yq 'each'
---
key: foo
value:
  one: 1
  two: 2
  three: 3
---
key: baz
value: [ 3, 2, 1 ]

$ yq 'each( .foo )'
---
key: one
value: 1
---
key: two
value: 2
---
key: three
value: 3

$ yq 'each( .baz )'
---
key: 0
value: 3
---
key: 1
value: 2
---
key: 2
value: 1

The documents created by each can be piped to further filters.

grep( EXPRESSION )

If EXPRESSION is true, return the current document. Otherwise, return empty.

This is exactly the same as:

if EXPRESSION then . else empty
select( EXPRESSION )

Another name for grep() to match jq's syntax.

group_by( EXPRESSION )

Group incoming documents based on the result of EXPRESSION, yielding a single document containing a hash of arrays.

# INPUT
---
foo: 'bar'
baz: 1
---
foo: 'bar'
baz: 2
---
foo: 'baz'
baz: 3

$ yq 'group_by( .foo )'
bar:
    - foo: bar
      baz: 1
    - foo: bar
      baz: 2
baz:
    - foo: baz
      baz: 3

NOTE: If you are filtering a lot of documents, this will consume a lot of memory.

parse_time( EXPRESSION, FORMAT )

Parse the date/time string in EXPRESSION and return the number of seconds since the UNIX epoch (1970-01-01 00:00:00). FORMAT is optional, and will try to guess what format the date/time is in.

FORMAT may be one of the following:

iso

An ISO8601 date/time string with a 4-digit year. 2-digit years, week numbers, and year days are not (yet) supported.

2017-01-01T00:00:00
2017-01-01 00:00:00
2017-01-01
20170101000000
201701010000
20170101
apache

The date/time format used by the Common Log Format (Apache HTTP logs).

01/Jan/2017:00:00:00
# INPUT
timestamp: 2017-01-01 00:00:00

$ yq '.timestamp = parse_time( .timestamp, "iso" )'
timestamp: 1483228800

$ yq '.timestamp = parse_time( .timestamp )'
timestamp: 1483228800

CONDITIONALS

if EXPRESSION then TRUE_FILTER else FALSE_FILTER

If the EXPRESSION is true, return the result of TRUE_FILTER, otherwise return the result of FALSE_FILTER.

# INPUT
foo: bar
baz: fuzz

$ yq 'if .foo eq bar then .baz else .foo'
fuzz

$ yq 'if .foo eq buzz then .baz else .foo'
bar

$ yq 'if .foo then .baz'
fuzz

$ yq 'if .herp then .derp else .'
foo: bar
baz: fuzz

The else FALSE_FILTER is optional and defaults to returning undefined.

COMBINATORS

Combinators combine multiple expressions to yield one or more documents in the output stream.

,

Multiple EXPRESSIONS may be separated by commas to yield multiple documents in the output.

# INPUT
foo: bar
baz: fuzz

$ yq '.foo, .baz'
bar
---
fuzz
|

Multiple EXPRESSIONS may be separated by pipes to give the output of the left expression as the input of the right expression (much like how shell pipes work).

# INPUT
foo: bar
baz: fuzz
pop: more
---
foo: buzz
baz: fizz
pop: jump

$ yq '{ foo: .foo, val: .pop } | group_by( .foo )'
bar:
    - foo: bar
      val: more
buzz:
    - foo: buzz
      val: jump

The above example can be useful to avoid group_by memory issues when dealing with very large streams: Reduce the size of the working document by keeping only the keys you want, then group those documents.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

YERTL_FORMAT

Specify the default format Yertl uses between commands. Defaults to yaml. Can be set to json for interoperability with other programs.

YQ_VERBOSE

Set the verbosity level. Useful when running the tests.

AUTHOR

Doug Bell <preaction@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2018 by Doug Bell.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

1 POD Error

The following errors were encountered while parsing the POD:

Around line 669:

You forgot a '=back' before '=head2'