What I really want is all the shell commands to have an object (e.g. json) output mode. Then all my "glue" between tools becomes less bespoke and more standardized, e.g. jq. Instead of analyzing output to build weird grep and awk statements, I would just need to remember a couple of jq patterns, take a quick look at the output, and use one of my patterns to extract the data to stream to the next command.
https://github.com/kellyjonbrazil/jc - "CLI tool and python library that converts the output of popular command-line tools, file-types, and common strings to JSON, YAML, or Dictionaries. This allows piping of output to tools like jq and simplifying automation scripts."
I have a recurring nightmare where web developers create a one world government where they enforce a law requiring all data be converted to JSON before transmission. Existing network protocols are replaced with JSON-compatible versions, and specialized JSON parsing ASICs become a necessity in network devices. The nightmare ends with the collapse of civilization.
