JSON: A Pragmatic Choice for Machine-Readable Output on Unix
2025-02-24
The author advocates for using JSON as the machine-readable output format, based on their experience deleting emails from a Postfix mail queue. While not perfect, JSON offers several practical advantages on Unix systems: clarity, broad compatibility, extensive tool support, and easy conversion to other formats. For new programs, the author suggests that using only JSON is the simplest approach, avoiding the complexities of designing custom formats and promoting interoperability between Unix programs.
Development
Machine-readable output