Parsing JSON with Awk in Forty Lines

JSON is hierarchical and not easily split in the Unix shell without external tools.

Awk can be used to implement a basic JSON parser in about forty lines of code.

The parser defines a get_json_value function that takes JSON text and a dotted key path to return values.

Arrays and objects are handled uniformly by treating arrays as objects with integer keys.

A decode_json_string function handles common escape sequences except Unicode and reports errors on invalid input.

The implementation assumes valid JSON input and will error out on unexpected or malformed data.