That jq expression is surely more difficult to summon than a line-based grep pattern.

I can’t think of one off the top of my head, so maybe I’m misremembering why I originally decided I preferred flatter structures. It’s possible it was due to some limitation on my part as I was first learning to work with JSON.

Looking back at some other JSON output, like `ip addr`, I’m not seeing anything egregious. There are just a couple useless top-level keys in the `iostat` output that make the queries longer and don’t seem to add value.

Using the flat structure with a type field lends itself well to lazily outputting JSON lines, so maybe that’s why I tend to represent cli output that way. It’s sort of how you would format the data when sending to ELk or Splunk.

Since I initially thought of JC as a cli tool, I was trying to reduce line length. Even the name JC was selected so it wouldn’t significantly increase the line length. So not nesting data inside meta objects is something I would encourage.

> It certainly seems like it does when the first example for flattening is oversimplifying an already simple structure that doesn't really need flattening.

For the purposes of making an example of how the concept is applied, making a verbose example is counterproductive. This doesn't require explanation because developers don't make work for themselves they don't need to, in practice.