grep : Count the number of elements in json response

Asked May 04 '20 at 11:21

Active May 04 '20 at 11:21

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I am using grep command to get the number of elements present in the json API response (retrieved by curl). Below is an example response:

[{"k1":"v1"},{"k2:"v2"}]

The above response contains 2 elements so I want the command to return 2. Below is what I have tried:

echo '[{"k1":"v1"},{"k2:"v2"}]' | grep -oP '\[{.+}\]' | wc -l
echo '[{"k1":"v1"},{"k2:"v2"}]' | grep -oP '{.+}' | wc -l
echo '[{"k1":"v1"},{"k2:"v2"}]' | grep -oP '\{.+\}' | wc -l

All these match the whole string and I just get 1 as an output for each of the above commands. What changes do I need to make in order for grep to return the correct count? It needs to be key/value agnostic.

asked May 04 '20 at 11:21

Darshan Mehta

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See https://ideone.com/zfE4nI, you need a non-greedy quantifier, `grep -oP '\{.+?\}'` – Wiktor Stribiżew May 04 '20 at 11:22
This should not be done via regex as this is JSON data and regex will break with slight change of data. Use `jq` instead. – anubhava May 04 '20 at 11:29
`jq '. | length' <<< '[{"k1":"v1"},{"k2":"v2"}]'` – anubhava May 04 '20 at 11:34
@anubhava unfortunately I do not have `jq` installed on live servers so can't use it. – Darshan Mehta May 04 '20 at 11:38

grep : Count the number of elements in json response

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