260617.1 · Update NEWS.md and AUTHORS for 1.8.2 (#3529)

1.8.2

This is a patch release with security fixes and bug fixes since 1.8.1, along with new builds for Windows arm64 and Docker arm/v7. Full commit log can be found at https://github.com/jqlang/jq/compare/jq-1.8.1...jq-1.8.2.

Security fixes

CVE-2026-32316: Fix heap buffer overflow in jvp_string_append and jvp_string_copy_replace_bad. @itchyny e47e56d226519635768e6aab2f38f0ab037c09e5
CVE-2026-33947: Limit path depth to prevent stack overflow in jv_setpath, jv_getpath, jv_delpaths. @itchyny fb59f1491058d58bdc3e8dd28f1773d1ac690a1f
CVE-2026-33948: Fix NUL truncation in the JSON parser. @itchyny 6374ae0bcdfe33a18eb0ae6db28493b1f34a0a5b
CVE-2026-39956: Fix _strindices missing runtime type checks. @tlsbollei fdf8ef0f0810e3d365cdd5160de43db46f57ed03
CVE-2026-39979: Fix out-of-bounds read in jv_parse_sized(). @wader 2f09060afab23fe9390cce7cb860b10416e1bf5f
CVE-2026-40164: Randomize hash seed to mitigate hash collision DoS attacks. @AsafMeizner @itchyny 0c7d133c3c7e37c00b6d46b658a02244fdd3c784
CVE-2026-40612: Limit containment check depth to prevent stack overflow in contains. @itchyny d1a12569d91641135976a8536776a4a329c02cc2
CVE-2026-41256: Fix NUL truncation in program files loaded with -f. @itchyny 5a015deae35d19e3ebbc65db6c157a80e76df738
CVE-2026-41257: Fix signed-int overflow in stack_reallocate. @itchyny 01b3cded76daacbfddb7f8763700b0803bcb5c6f
CVE-2026-43894: Reject numeric literals longer than DEC_MAX_DIGITS (999999999). @itchyny 9761ceb7d6cc48c16b25f0ab1baaef0e701927e4
CVE-2026-43895: Reject embedded NUL bytes in module import paths. @itchyny 9d223f153c3632a207fa071caaa6292da33ae361
CVE-2026-43896: Limit recursive object merge depth to prevent stack overflow. @itchyny 532ccea6080ed6758f39fe9f6208a44b665023d2
CVE-2026-44777: Detect circular module imports to prevent stack overflow. @itchyny f58787c41835d9b17795730cb04925fdba25c71c
CVE-2026-47770: Guard deep structural equality and comparison recursion. @fuyu0425 7122866869960b55cea3646bc91334ef55787831
CVE-2026-49839: Fix heap-buffer-overflow in raw file loading. @itchyny e987df0d463d85fd70825e042a082427e8275b86
CVE-2026-54679: Tighten string length bounds and propagate invalid jv in implode. @itchyny 46d1da30944ce93dd671ac72b6513fc0eb747837
GHSA-gf4g-95wj-4q4r: Fix use-after-free in args2obj() array argument path. @sseal #3498
GHSA-hj52-j2c9-r8r4: Fix signed-int overflow in tokenadd to prevent buffer overflow. @itchyny 63751f8a9f94dc6d3370084ad0d60826c58b955d
Limit the number of function parameters and definitions to prevent SEGV. @OwenSanzas #3460
Pre-allocate tokenbuf for string parser to avoid undefined behavior. @fab1ano #3485
Avoid stack overflow when freeing deeply nested values. @itchyny 33d7bce3218ec718139342e5b48b475c4dea715f
Fix memory leaks and double frees. @itchyny #3487

Releasing

Add builds for Windows arm64. @dennisameling #3376
Support arm/v7 architecture in Docker images. @itchyny #3463
Update GPG signing key. @itchyny 0ff997f7c4c07660ffc6ad2506d5f56b8136208b
Add artifact-metadata permission for actions/attest. @itchyny #3530
Upload attestation bundle as a release artifact, allowing unauthenticated verification via gh attestation verify --bundle jq-attestation.json. @itchyny #3563

CLI changes

Improve error message truncation with closing delimiters. @itchyny #3478
Remove extra space from die function output. @krtk6160 #3391
Fix raw input flag not to corrupt multi-byte characters. @itchyny #3421
Fix crash when importing a module with errors twice. @itchyny #3497
Increase the maximum printing depth from 256 to 10000. @ishnagy #3414

Changes to existing functions

Fix rtrimstr("") always outputting "". @A4-Tacks #3415
Fix infinite loop and undefined behavior in del(.[nan]). @itchyny #3490
Refactor @uri and @urid to fix multi-byte UTF-8 corruption. @itchyny #3495
Fix tonumber and toboolean to reject strings with embedded null bytes. @itchyny #3496
Fix undefined behavior in modulo operator. @fab1ano #3486
Fix reversed pointer subtraction in f_env bounds check. @itchyny #3465
Fix missing validity check in f_strflocaltime after f_localtime. @itchyny #3491
Fix year 2038 problem on 32-bit platforms. @itchyny #3407
Use // instead of //= in from_entries definition. @itchyny #3516

Build and test changes

Drop strptime test using non-portable %F. @alyssais #3365
Limit oniguruma depth to 1024 in jq_fuzz_execute. @sudhackar #3377
Fix localization test for time formatting functions. @itchyny #3409
Fix expected value assertion. @itchyny #3431 #3408
Fix typo in tests/jq.test. @bigmoonbit #3441
Refactor tm2jv to handle fractional seconds. @itchyny #3489
Fix jq_fuzz_parse_stream: use iterative parser API for streaming mode. @OwenSanzas #3499
Fix crashes and resource leaks in jq_testsuite. @itchyny #3509
Support building with --disable-maintainer-mode and source != build dir. @Saur2000 #3518
Add Solaris support. @vlmarek #3515
Respect SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH while generating man page. @McSinyx #3514
Fix undefined pointer arithmetic in UTF-8 helpers. @theyoucheng df924eae91af10cc236a907cdadd97813827aa1f
Fix one-byte over-read in BASE64_DECODE_TABLE. @itchyny #3547

Documentation changes

Add wiki link to navigation bar. @wader #3424
Add missing word in manual for rawfile. @jpmens #3434
Fix typo “stder” to “stderr”. @jjatria #3446
Fix buttons in tutorial to toggle labels when clicked on. @itchyny #3493
Fix “happened” spelling in tutorial changelog entries. @Rohan5commit #3525

1.8.1

This is a patch release to fix security, performance, and build issues found in 1.8.0. Full commit log can be found at https://github.com/jqlang/jq/compare/jq-1.8.0...jq-1.8.1.

Security fixes

CVE-2025-49014: Fix heap use after free in f_strftime, f_strflocaltime. @wader 499c91bca9d4d027833bc62787d1bb075c03680e
GHSA-f946-j5j2-4w5m: Fix stack overflow in node_min_byte_len of oniguruma. @wader 5e159b34b179417e3e0404108190a2ac7d65611c

CLI changes

Fix assertion failure when syntax error happens at the end of the query. @itchyny #3350

Changes to existing functions

Fix portability of strptime/1 especially for Windows. @itchyny #3342

Language changes

Revert the change of reduce/foreach state variable in 1.8.0 (#3205). This change was reverted due to serious performance regression. @itchyny #3349

Documentation changes

Add LICENSE notice of NetBSD’s strptime() to COPYING. @itchyny #3344

Build improvements

Fix build on old Mac with old sed. @qianbinbin #3336

1.8.0

We are pleased to announce the release of version 1.8.0. This release includes a number of improvements since the last version. Note that some changes may introduce breaking changes to existing scripts, so be sure to read the following information carefully. Full commit log can be found at https://github.com/jqlang/jq/compare/jq-1.7.1...jq-1.8.0.

Releasing

Change the version number pattern to 1.X.Y (1.8.0 instead of 1.8). @itchyny #2999

Generate provenance attestations for release artifacts and docker image. @lectrical #3225

gh attestation verify --repo jqlang/jq jq-linux-amd64
gh attestation verify --repo jqlang/jq oci://ghcr.io/jqlang/jq:1.8.0

Security fixes

CVE-2024-23337: Fix signed integer overflow in jvp_array_write and jvp_object_rehash. @itchyny de21386681c0df0104a99d9d09db23a9b2a78b1e
- The fix for this issue now limits the maximum size of arrays and objects to 536870912 (2^29) elements.
CVE-2024-53427: Reject NaN with payload while parsing JSON. @itchyny a09a4dfd55e6c24d04b35062ccfe4509748b1dd3
- The fix for this issue now drops support for NaN with payload in JSON (like NaN123). Other JSON extensions like NaN and Infinity are still supported.
CVE-2025-48060: Fix heap buffer overflow in jv_string_vfmt. @itchyny c6e041699d8cd31b97375a2596217aff2cfca85b
Fix use of uninitialized value in check_literal. @itchyny #3324
Fix segmentation fault on strftime/1, strflocaltime/1. @itchyny #3271
Fix unhandled overflow in @base64d. @emanuele6 #3080

CLI changes

Fix --indent 0 implicitly enabling --compact-output. @amarshall @gbrlmarn @itchyny #3232

$ jq --indent 0 . <<< '{ "foo": ["hello", "world"] }'
{
"foo": [
"hello",
"world"
]
}
# Previously, this implied --compact-output, but now outputs with new lines.

Improve error messages to show problematic position in the filter. @itchyny #3292

$ jq -n '1 + $foo + 2'
jq: error: $foo is not defined at <top-level>, line 1, column 5:
    1 + $foo + 2
        ^^^^
jq: 1 compile error

Include column number in parser and compiler error messages. @liviubobocu #3257

Fix error message for string literal beginning with single quote. @mattmeyers #2964

$ jq .foo <<< "{'foo':'bar'}"
jq: parse error: Invalid string literal; expected ", but got ' at line 1, column 7
# Previously, the error message was Invalid numeric literal at line 1, column 7.

Improve JQ_COLORS environment variable to support larger escapes like truecolor. @SArpnt #3282

JQ_COLORS="38;2;255;173;173:38;2;255;214;165:38;2;253;255;182:38;2;202;255;191:38;2;155;246;255:38;2;160;196;255:38;2;189;178;255:38;2;255;198;255" jq -nc '[null,false,true,42,{"a":"bc"}]'

Add --library-path long option for -L. @thaliaarchi #3194
Fix --slurp --stream when input has no trailing newline character. @itchyny #3279
Fix --indent option to error for malformed values. @thaliaarchi #3195
Fix option parsing of --binary on non-Windows platforms. @calestyo #3131
Fix issue with ~/.jq on Windows where $HOME is not set. @kirkoman #3114
Fix broken non-Latin output in the command help on Windows. @itchyny #3299
Increase the maximum parsing depth for JSON to 10000. @itchyny #3328
Parse short options in order given. @thaliaarchi #3194
Consistently reset color formatting. @thaliaarchi #3034

New functions

Add trim/0, ltrim/0 and rtrim/0 to trim leading and trailing white spaces. @wader #3056
```
$ jq -n '" hello " | trim, ltrim, rtrim'
"hello"
"hello "
" hello"
```
Add trimstr/1 to trim string from both ends. @gbrlmarn #3319
```
$ jq -n '"foobarfoo" | trimstr("foo")'
"bar"
```

Add add/1. Generator variant of add/0. @myaaaaaaaaa #3144

$ jq -c '.sum = add(.xs[])' <<< '{"xs":[1,2,3]}'
{"xs":[1,2,3],"sum":6}

Add skip/2 as the counterpart to limit/2. @itchyny #3181
```
$ jq -nc '[1,2,3,4,5] | [skip(2; .[])]'
[3,4,5]
```
Add toboolean/0 to convert strings to booleans. @brahmlower @itchyny #2098
```
$ jq -n '"true", "false" | toboolean'
true
false
```
Add @urid format. Reverse of @uri. @fmgornick #3161
```
$ jq -Rr '@urid' <<< '%6a%71'
jq
```

Changes to existing functions

Use code point index for indices/1, index/1 and rindex/1. @wader #3065
- This is a breaking change. Use utf8bytelength/0 to get byte index.
Improve tonumber/0 performance and rejects numbers with leading or trailing white spaces. @itchyny @thaliaarchi #3055 #3195
- This is a breaking change. Use trim/0 to remove leading and trailing white spaces.
Populate timezone data when formatting time. This fixes timezone name in strftime/1, strflocaltime/1 for DST. @marcin-serwin @sihde #3203 #3264 #3323
Preserve numerical precision on unary negation, abs/0, length/0. @itchyny #3242 #3275
Make last(empty) yield no output values like first(empty). @itchyny #3179
Make ltrimstr/1 and rtrimstr/1 error for non-string inputs. @emanuele6 #2969
Make limit/2 error for negative count. @itchyny #3181
Fix mktime/0 overflow and allow fewer elements in date-time representation array. @emanuele6 #3070 #3162
Fix non-matched optional capture group. @wader #3238
Provide strptime/1 on all systems. @george-hopkins @fdellwing #3008 #3094
Fix _WIN32 port of strptime. @emanuele6 #3071
Improve bsearch/1 performance by implementing in C. @eloycoto #2945
Improve unique/0 and unique_by/1 performance. @itchyny @emanuele6 #3254 #3304
Fix error messages including long string literal not to break Unicode characters. @itchyny #3249
Remove pow10/0 as it has been deprecated in glibc 2.27. Use exp10/0 instead. @itchyny #3059
Remove private (and undocumented) _nwise filter. @itchyny #3260

Language changes

Fix precedence of binding syntax against unary and binary operators. Also, allow some expressions as object values. @itchyny #3053 #3326

This is a breaking change that may change the output of filters with binding syntax as follows.

$ jq -nc '[-1 as $x | 1,$x]'
[1,-1]    # previously, [-1,-1]
$ jq -nc '1 | . + 2 as $x | -$x'
-3        # previously, -1
$ jq -nc '{x: 1 + 2, y: false or true, z: null // 3}'
{"x":3,"y":true,"z":3}    # previously, syntax error

Support Tcl-style multiline comments. @emanuele6 #2989

#!/bin/sh --
# Can be use to do shebang scripts.
# Next line will be seen as a comment be of the trailing backslash. \
exec jq ...
# this jq expression will result in [1]
[
  1,
  # \
  2
]

Fix foreach not to break init backtracking with DUPN. @kanwren #3266
```
$ jq -n '[1, 2] | foreach .[] as $x (0, 1; . + $x)'
1
3
2
4
```

Fix reduce/foreach state variable should not be reset each iteration. @itchyny #3205

$ jq -n 'reduce range(5) as $x (0; .+$x | select($x!=2))'
8
$ jq -nc '[foreach range(5) as $x (0; .+$x | select($x!=2); [$x,.])]'
[[0,0],[1,1],[3,4],[4,8]]

Support CRLF line breaks in filters. @itchyny #3274
Improve performance of repeating strings. @itchyny #3272

Documentation changes

Switch the homepage to custom domain jqlang.org. @itchyny @owenthereal #3243
Make latest release instead of development version the default manual. @wader #3130
Add opengraph meta tags. @wader #3247
Replace jqplay.org with play.jqlang.org @owenthereal #3265
Add missing line from decNumber’s licence to COPYING. @emanuele6 #3106
Various document improvements. @tsibley #3322, @itchyny #3240, @jhcarl0814 #3239, @01mf02 #3184, @thaliaarchi #3199, @NathanBaulch #3173, @cjlarose #3164, @sheepster1 #3105, #3103, @kishoreinvits #3042, @jbrains #3035, @thalman #3033, @SOF3 #3017, @wader #3015, @wllm-rbnt #3002

Build improvements

Fix build with GCC 15 (C23). @emanuele6 #3209
Fix build with -Woverlength-strings @emanuele6 #3019
Fix compiler warning type-limits in found_string. @itchyny #3263
Fix compiler error in jv_dtoa.c and builtin.c. @UlrichEckhardt #3036
Fix warning: a function definition without a prototype is deprecated. @itchyny #3259
Define _BSD_SOURCE in builtin.c for OpenBSD support. @itchyny #3278
Define empty JV_{,V}PRINTF_LIKE macros if __GNUC__ is not defined. @emanuele6 #3160
Avoid ctype.h abuse: cast char to unsigned char first. @riastradh #3152
Remove multiple calls to free when successively calling jq_reset. @Sameesunkaria #3134
Enable IBM z/OS support. @sachintu47 #3277
Fix insecure RUNPATH. @orbea #3212
Avoid zero-length calloc. @itchyny #3280
Move oniguruma and decNumber to vendor directory. @itchyny #3234

Test improvements

Run tests in C locale. @emanuele6 #3039
Improve reliability of NO_COLOR tests. @dag-erling #3188
Improve shtest not to fail if JQ_COLORS and NO_COLOR are already set. @SArpnt #3283
Refactor constant folding tests. @itchyny #3233
Make tests pass when --disable-decnum. @nicowilliams 6d02d53f515bf1314d644eee93ba30b0d11c7d2b
Disable Valgrind by default during testing. @itchyny #3269

1.7.1

Security

CVE-2023-50246: Fix heap buffer overflow in jvp_literal_number_literal
CVE-2023-50268: fix stack-buffer-overflow if comparing nan with payload

CLI changes

Make the default background color more suitable for bright backgrounds. @mjarosie @taoky @nicowilliams @itchyny #2904
Allow passing the inline jq script after --. @emanuele6 #2919
Restrict systems operations on OpenBSD and remove unused mkstemp. @klemensn #2934
Fix possible uninitialised value dereference if jq_init() fails. @emanuele6 @nicowilliams #2935

Language changes

Simplify paths/0 and paths/1. @asheiduk @emanuele6 #2946
Reject U+001F in string literals. @torsten-schenk @itchyny @wader #2911
Remove unused nref accumulator in block_bind_library. @emanuele6 #2914
Remove a bunch of unused variables, and useless assignments. @emanuele6 #2914
main.c: Remove unused EXIT_STATUS_EXACT option. @emanuele6 #2915
Actually use the number correctly casted from double to int as index. @emanuele6 #2916
src/builtin.c: remove unnecessary jv_copy-s in type_error/type_error2. @emanuele6 #2937
Remove undefined behavior caught by LLVM 10 UBSAN. @Gaelan @emanuele6 #2926
Convert decnum to binary64 (double) instead of decimal64. This makes jq behave like the JSON specification suggests and more similar to other languages. @wader @leonid-s-usov #2949
Fix memory leaks on invalid input for ltrimstr/1 and rtrimstr/1. @emanuele6 #2977
Fix memory leak on failed get for setpath/2. @emanuele6 #2970
Fix nan from json parsing also for nans with payload that start with ’n’. @emanuele6 #2985
Allow carriage return characters in comments. @emanuele6 #2942 #2984

Documentation changes

Generate links in the man page. @emanuele6 #2931
Standardize arch types to AMD64 & ARM64 from index page download dropdown. @owenthereal #2884

libjq

Add extern C for C++. @rockwotj #2953

Build and test changes

Fix incorrect syntax for checksum file. @kamontat @wader #2899
Remove -dirty version suffix for windows release build. @itchyny #2888
Make use of od in tests more compatible. @nabijaczleweli @emanuele6 @nicowilliams #2922
Add dependabot. @yeikel #2889
Extend fuzzing setup to fuzz parser and JSON serializer. @DavidKorczynski @emanuele6 #2952
Keep releasing executables with legacy names. @itchyny #2951

1.7

After a five year hiatus we’re back with a GitHub organization, with new admins and new maintainers who have brought a great deal of energy to make a long-awaited and long-needed new release. We’re very grateful for all the new owners, admins, and maintainers. Special thanks go to Owen Ou (@owenthereal) for pushing to set up a new GitHub organization for jq, Stephen Dolan (@stedolan) for transferring the jq repository to the new organization, @itchyny for doing a great deal of work to get the release done, Mattias Wadman (@wader) and Emanuele Torre (@emanuele6) for many PRs and code reviews. Many others also contributed PRs, issues, and code reviews as well, and you can find their contributions in the Git log and on the closed issues and PRs page.

Since the last stable release many things have happened:

jq now lives at https://github.com/jqlang
New maintainers, admins, and owners have been recruited.
- A list of current maintainers github
NEWS file is replaced by NEWS.md with Markdown format. @wader #2599
CI, scan builds, release, website builds etc now use GitHub actions. @owenthereal @wader @itchyny #2596 #2603 #2620 #2723
Lots of documentation improvements and fixes.
Website updated with new section search box, better section ids for linking, dark mode, etc. @itchyny #2628
Release builds for:
- Linux amd64, arm64, armel, armhf, i386, mips, mips64, mips64el, mips64r6, mips64r6el, mipsel, mipsr6, mipsr6el, powerpc, ppc64el, riscv64 and s390x
- macOS amd64 and arm64
- Windows i386 and amd64
- Docker linux/386, linux/amd64, linux/arm64, linux/mips64le, linux/ppc64le, linux/riscv64 and linux/s390x
- More details see @owenthereal #2665
Docker images are now available from ghcr.io/jqlang/jq instead of Docker Hub. @itchyny #2652 #2686
OSS-fuzz. @DavidKorczynski #2760 #2762

Full commit log can be found at https://github.com/jqlang/jq/compare/jq-1.6...jq-1.7 but here are some highlights:

CLI changes

Make object key color configurable using JQ_COLORS environment variable. @itchyny @haguenau @ericpruitt #2703

# this would make "field" bold yellow (`1;33`, the last value)
$ JQ_COLORS="0;90:0;37:0;37:0;37:0;32:1;37:1;37:1;33" ./jq -n '{field: 123}'
{
  "field": 123
}

Change the default color of null to Bright Black. @itchyny #2824
Respect NO_COLOR environment variable to disable color output. See https://no-color.org for details. @itchyny #2728
Improved --help output. Now mentions all options and nicer order. @itchyny @wader #2747 #2766 #2799

Fix multiple issues of exit code using --exit-code/-e option. @ryo1kato #1697

# true-ish last output value exits with zero
$ jq -ne true ; echo $?
true
0
# false-ish last output value (false and null) exits with 1
$ jq -ne false ; echo $?
false
1
# no output value exists with 4
$ jq -ne empty ; echo $?
4

Add --binary/-b on Windows for binary output. To get \n instead of \r\n line endings. @nicowilliams 0dab2b1

Add --raw-output0 for NUL (zero byte) separated output. @asottile @pabs3 @itchyny #1990 #2235 #2684

# will output a zero byte after each output
$ jq -n --raw-output0 '1,2,3' | xxd
00000000: 3100 3200 3300                           1.2.3.
# can be used with xargs -0
$ jq -n --raw-output0 '"a","b","c"' | xargs -0 -n1
a
b
c
$ jq -n --raw-output0 '"a b c", "d\ne\nf"' | xargs -0 printf '[%s]\n'
[a b c]
[d
e
f]
# can be used with read -d ''
$ while IFS= read -r -d '' json; do
>   jq '.name' <<< "$json"
> done < <(jq -n --raw-output0 '{name:"a b c"},{name:"d\ne\nf"}')
"a b c"
"d\ne\nf"
# also it's an error to output a string containing a NUL when using NUL separator
$ jq -n --raw-output0 '"\u0000"'
jq: error (at <unknown>): Cannot dump a string containing NUL with --raw-output0 option

Fix assert crash and validate JSON for --jsonarg. @wader #2658
Remove deprecated --argfile option. @itchyny #2768
Enable stack protection. @nicowilliams #2801

Language changes

Use decimal number literals to preserve precision. Comparison operations respects precision but arithmetic operations might truncate. @leonid-s-usov #1752

# precision is preserved
$ echo '100000000000000000' | jq .
100000000000000000
# comparison respects precision (this is false in JavaScript)
$ jq -n '100000000000000000 < 100000000000000001'
true
# sort/0 works
$ jq -n -c '[100000000000000001, 100000000000000003, 100000000000000004, 100000000000000002] | sort'
[100000000000000001,100000000000000002,100000000000000003,100000000000000004]
# arithmetic operations might truncate (same as JavaScript)
$ jq -n '100000000000000000 + 10'
100000000000000020

Adds new builtin pick(stream) to emit a projection of the input object or array. @pkoppstein #2656 #2779

$ jq -n '{"a": 1, "b": {"c": 2, "d": 3}, "e": 4} | pick(.a, .b.c, .x)'
{
  "a": 1,
  "b": {
    "c": 2
  },
  "x": null
}

Adds new builtin debug(msgs) that works like debug but applies a filter on the input before writing to stderr. @pkoppstein #2710

$ jq -n '1 as $x | 2 | debug("Entering function foo with $x == \($x)", .) | (.+1)'
["DEBUG:","Entering function foo with $x == 1"]
["DEBUG:",2]
3
$ jq -n '{a: 1, b: 2, c: 3} | debug({a, b, sum: (.a+.b)})'
["DEBUG:",{"a":1,"b":2,"sum":3}]
{
  "a": 1,
  "b": 2,
  "c": 3
}

Adds new builtin scan($re; $flags). Was documented but not implemented. @itchyny #1961

# look for pattern "ab" in "abAB" ignoring casing
$ jq -n '"abAB" | scan("ab"; "i")'
"ab"
"AB"

Adds new builtin abs to get absolute value. This potentially allows the literal value of numbers to be preserved as length and fabs convert to float. @pkoppstein #2767

Allow if without else-branch. When skipped the else-branch will be . (identity). @chancez @wader #1825 #2481

# convert 1 to "one" otherwise keep as is
$ jq -n '1,2 | if . == 1 then "one" end'
"one"
2
# behaves the same as
$ jq -n '1,2 | if . == 1 then "one" else . end'
"one"
2
# also works with elif
$ jq -n '1,2,3 | if . == 1 then "one" elif . == 2 then "two" end
"one"
"two"
3

Allow use of $binding as key in object literals. @nicowilliams 8ea4a55

$ jq -n '"a" as $key | {$key: 123}'
{
  "a": 123
}
# previously parentheses were needed
$ jq -n '"a" as $key | {($key): 123}'
{
  "a": 123
}

Allow dot between chained indexes when using .["index"] @nicowilliams #1168

$ jq -n '{"a": {"b": 123}} | .a["b"]'
123
# now this also works
$ jq -n '{"a": {"b": 123}} | .a.["b"]'
123

Allow dot for chained value iterator .[], .[]? @wader #2650

$ jq -n '{"a": [123]} | .a[]'
123
# now this also works
$ jq -n '{"a": [123]} | .a.[]'
123

Fix try/catch catches more than it should. @nicowilliams #2750
Speed up and refactor some builtins, also remove scalars_or_empty/0. @muhmuhten #1845
Now halt and halt_error exit immediately instead of continuing to the next input. @emanuele6 #2667
Fix issue converting string to number after previous convert error. @thalman #2400
Fix issue representing large numbers on some platforms causing invalid JSON output. @itchyny #2661

Fix deletion using assigning empty against arrays. @itchyny #2133

# now this works as expected, filter out all values over 2 by assigning empty
$ jq -c '(.[] | select(. >= 2)) |= empty' <<< '[1,5,3,0,7]'
[1,0]

Allow keywords to be used as binding name in more places. @emanuele6 #2681
Allow using nan as NaN in JSON. @emanuele6 #2712
Expose a module’s function names in modulemeta. @mrwilson #2837
Fix contains/1 to handle strings with NUL. @nicowilliams 61cd6db
Fix stderr/0 to output raw text without any decoration. @itchyny #2751
Fix nth/2 to emit empty on index out of range. @itchyny #2674
Fix implode to not assert and instead replace invalid Unicode codepoints. @wader #2646
Fix indices/1 and rindex/1 in case of overlapping matches in strings. @emanuele6 #2718
Fix sub/3 to resolve issues involving global search-and-replace (gsub) operations. @pkoppstein #2641
Fix significand/0, gamma/0 and drem/2 to be available on macOS. @itchyny #2756 #2775
Fix empty regular expression matches. @itchyny #2677
Fix overflow exception of the modulo operator. @itchyny #2629
Fix string multiplication by 0 (and less than 1) to emit empty string. @itchyny #2142
Fix segfault when using libjq and threads. @thalman #2546
Fix constant folding of division and reminder with zero divisor. @itchyny #2797
Fix error/0, error/1 to throw null error. @emanuele6 #2823
Simpler and faster transpose. @pkoppstein #2758
Simple and efficient implementation of walk/1. @pkoppstein #2795
Remove deprecated filters leaf_paths, recurse_down. @itchyny #2666

Previous releases

Release history

jq version 1.6 was released on Fri Nov 2 2018
jq version 1.5 was released on Sat Aug 15 2015
jq version 1.4 was released on Mon Jun 9 2014
jq version 1.3 was released on Sun May 19 2013
jq version 1.2 was released on Thu Dec 20 2012
jq version 1.1 was released on Sun Oct 21 2012
jq version 1.0 was released on Sun Oct 21 2012

New features in 1.6 since 1.5:

Destructuring Alternation
New Builtins:
- builtins/0
- stderr/0
- halt/0, halt_error/1
- isempty/1
- walk/1
- utf8bytelength/1
- localtime/0, strflocaltime/1
- SQL-style builtins
- and more!
Add support for ASAN and UBSAN
Make it easier to use jq with shebangs (8f6f28c)
Add $ENV builtin variable to access environment
Add JQ_COLORS env var for configuring the output colors

New features in 1.5 since 1.4:

regular expressions (with Oniguruma)
a library/module system
many new builtins
- datetime builtins
- math builtins
- regexp-related builtins
- stream-related builtins (e.g., all/1, any/1)
- minimal I/O builtins (inputs, debug)
new syntactic features, including:
- destructuring (. as [$first, $second] | ...)
- try/catch, generalized ? operator, and label/break
- foreach
- multiple definitions of a function with different numbers of arguments
command-line arguments
- –join-lines / -j for raw output
- –argjson and –slurpfile
- –tab and –indent
- –stream (streaming JSON parser)
- –seq (RFC7464 JSON text sequence)
- –run-tests improvements
optimizations:
- tail-call optimization
- reduce and foreach no longer leak a reference to .

New features in 1.4 since 1.3:

command-line arguments
- jq –arg-file variable file
- jq –unbuffered
- jq -e / –exit-status (set exit status based on outputs)
- jq -S / –sort-keys (now jq no longer sorts object keys by default
syntax
- .. -> like // in XPath (recursive traversal)
- question mark (e.g., .a?) to suppress errors
- .“foo” syntax (equivalent to .[“foo”])
- better error handling for .foo
- added % operator (modulo)
- allow negation without requiring extra parenthesis
- more function arguments (up to six)
filters:
- any, all
- iterables, arrays, objects, scalars, nulls, booleans, numbers, strings, values
string built-ins:
- split
- join (join an array of strings with a given separator string)
- ltrimstr, rtrimstr
- startswith, endswith
- explode, implode
- fromjson, tojson
- index, rindex, indices
math functions
- floor, sqrt, cbrt, etcetera (depends on what’s available from libm)
libjq – a C API interface to jq’s JSON representation and for running jq programs from C applications