Denotational Semantics and a Fast Interpreter for jq

TL;DR

This paper introduces a formal denotational semantics for a subset of jq, along with a faster interpreter called jaq, enabling better reasoning and improved performance over the original jq tool.

Contribution

It provides the first formal semantics for jq and implements a novel, more efficient interpreter that outperforms jq on most benchmarks.

Findings

jaq is faster than jq on 10 out of 13 benchmarks

Provides a formal semantics for jq's subset

Enables better reasoning about jq programs

Abstract

jq is a widely used tool that provides a programming language to manipulate JSON data. However, its semantics are currently only specified by its implementation, making it difficult to reason about its behaviour. To this end, I provide a syntax and denotational semantics for a subset of the jq language. In particular, the semantics provide a new way to interpret updates. I implement an extended version of the semantics in a novel interpreter for the jq language called jaq. Although jaq uses a significantly simpler approach to execute jq programs than jq, jaq is faster than jq on ten out of thirteen benchmarks.