Thanks! Will have to try out `jsonata`, as `jq` never clicked for me (too complex). Alternately I've been using a node.js program `json` [1] which has a basic but straightforward cli which covers 95% of my daily needs. I believe I found after trying to figure out the tool Joyent.com uses in there SmartOS sysadmin setup. Not sure if it's the exact same tool, but it's very similar.

As an example, basic manipulation is just:

`echo '{"age":10}' | json -e 'this.age++' #=> {"age": 11}`

1: https://github.com/trentm/json