Forcing miller to read data as string in conversion to JSON

Question

In the following MWE

echo x="1e2" | mlr --ojson cat

my intention is for miller to generate a one-element JSON array containing the object

{"x": "1e2"}

The object actually returned (within the array) is instead

{"x": 1e2}

where the value is taken as a number, I guess that as a consequence of its parsing. How can I tell miller to generate the JSON object with a string for its value rather than a number? (The rationale underlying the quotation marks around '1e2' in the MWE is precisely to highlight this intention.)

In `echo x="1e2"`, do you think the output includes the quotes? — muru, Jul 31 '23 at 05:50
@muru: I get your point. I was only highlighting my intention to have as value a string rather than a number. Escaping the quotation marks would lead to a string value, but one including the latter (escaped) marks. — Marcos, Jul 31 '23 at 17:23

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 25 '23 at 19:27

5

In Miller 6 you can use -S flag, which forces Miller to treat the data as strings:

echo x="1e2" | mlr --ojson -S cat

to get

[
{
  "x": "1e2"
}
]

Or you can cast it using string function

echo x="1e2" | mlr --ojson put '$x=string($x)'

edited Aug 25 '23 at 19:27

Kusalananda

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answered Jul 31 '23 at 05:59

aborruso

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Forcing miller to read data as string in conversion to JSON

1 Answers1