delete line from json file with sed in a shell

Question

I would like to delete a line containing "electron-inspector": "0.1.4", from .package.json

The following is not working.

sed -i '' -e 'electron-inspector' ./package.json

What do I have to change?

Answer 1

You could do this, but sed in not a JSON parser !

sed -i '' -e '/electron-inspector/d' file

(-i '' is required for macOS's sed)

Imagine a simple (inline) case like this :

{"foo": 123, "electron-inspector": "0.1.4", "bar": 42 }

BOOOM ! So :

The proper way, using jq :

jq -r 'del(.["electron-inspector"])' file.json > _.json && mv _.json file.json

The dash - is a special case for jq

If instead you had a simple case, the command would be :

jq 'del(.electroninspector)' file.json    

---

Check JQ

---

Another solution using nodejs and... javascript :

cat file.json
{"foo": 123, "electron-inspector": "0.1.4", "bar": 42 }

Code :

$ node<<EOF > _.json && mv _.json file.json                                               
var o = $(< file.json);
delete o["electron-inspector"];
console.log(JSON.stringify(o, null, 4));
EOF

Edited file :

{
    "foo": 123,
    "bar": 42
}

---

Last but not least, to edit the file properly using sponge :

Instead of : > x.json && mv x.json file.json, we can do :

command ...... file.json | sponge file.json

You need moreutils installed.