Opinion. Likely controversial. The fact that we need jq highlights that we are missing this functionality in shells. I argue that these days (nested) structured data is as basic requirement as having scalars, arrays and associative arrays (which bash has). It hurts my eyes seeing five line of assignment to variables where each one runs jq to extract that particular field from a data structure.
Commands with support would detect the shell and output an SQL schema along with insert statements containing the result of the command on a special file descriptor. These would be applied to a newly created 'history#' table and aliased to the 'result' table. The standard output of the command would still be displayed as it is now.
You could then do things like 'ls' and then 'select name,size,owner from result where size > 1024 and owner != 0;' And continue to run queries against the last result until it's replaced by a new command. Or run queries against the 'history#' table or multiple tables to join results from multiple independent commands.
With support for JSONB in most SQL engines this would provide a nice mechanism for working with any sort of nested data structure from any given program or from plain JSON files if required.
No contraversial at all. And without sounding like I'm flogging a dead horse, since I've mentioned it elsewhere, but you're after Nushell. Everything is data, structured data. And of interest to a sibling comment it's syntax is similar to SQL, with things like where and select.
Edit: in relation to the other sibling comment, Nushell was developed as an improvement over powershell. I use both and prefer nushell's syntax.
I did hear an opinion (somewhere else) that a shell shouldn't have associative arrays either and it was a mistake...
> Nushell
Nushell is a candidate and some people use it and like it. I personally disagree with the design. Then again, I'm not objective. I created Next Generation Shell. It's a fully fledged programming language with domain specific facilities (for running external programs for example). I like this approach more than trying to improve over a shell. It fits my brain better.
I think it's about alignment of the project and how you think.
If it won't be it this time, I'm working on the user interface of Next Generation Shell now and I would like to encourage you to revisit the project once that is done.
Tldr: interactive objects on the screen, each interaction results "interaction record" (structured data about what happened), semantic understanding of what's happening, record/replay facility.
More at "jq is a symptom" - https://ilya-sher.org/2018/09/10/jq-is-a-symptom/
Related and might be interesting - "JSON tools for command line" - https://ilya-sher.org/2018/04/10/list-of-json-tools-for-comm...