fq

MIT jq for binary formats — decode, query, REPL

DevOps / Tooling · OSS/MIT · 10.6k

Reviewed 2026-09-13 · last push 2026-10-16 · repo checked 2026-10-19

What's Good

MIT. wader/fq. Go tool + jq-shaped language + decoders for binary (and nested) formats: inspect trees, slice, transform, REPL with completion. Manual at wader.github.io/fq; source github.com/wader/fq.

The Catch

Vs jq (JSON filter), jless (JSON pager), gron (flatten-for-grep), and jc (CLI stdout→JSON): fq is the *binary-format* cousin, not a JSON-only pipe and not a packet capture GUI. Decoder coverage is wide but not every vendor blob; unknown formats still need a spec.

Verdict

MIT binary jq. Free forever; query the bytes when the file is not JSON.

Embed

Maintainer? Add the badge to your README. It is free, links to this review, and there is no paid version.

Markdown

[![Reviewed on Stack Gems](https://stackgems.com/badge/fq.svg)](https://stackgems.com/gems/fq)

HTML

<a href="https://stackgems.com/gems/fq"><img src="https://stackgems.com/badge/fq.svg" alt="fq reviewed on Stack Gems" height="20"></a>

DevOps →

Related