I would prefer to keep the ID in JSON

[karamo]

As a result of fix #433

I would prefer to keep the ID in JSON in "Nodes in mesh:" in the output of --info

In mesh_interface.py
in def showInfo(self, file=sys.stdout):

delete the line:
n2['user'].pop('id')

[mverch67]

Programmatically and conceptually this request doesn't really make sense, as the id is already part of the dictionary key and can be easily obtained in any programming/scripting language with json-parser, e.g:

$ jq 'keys[] as $k | "($k)=(.[$k] | .user.longName)"' nodes.json
"!55c58b64=Meshtastic-8b64"
"!fa5a0688=Meshtastic-0688"
"!fa5a06bc=Meshtastic 06bc"
"!fa5a06f8=Meshtastic 06f8"

If you are looking for a more user-readable output of nodes, then use --nodes.
See also my comment to the PR #433.

[karamo]

In my understanding of data structures, i.e. KEY / VALUE pairs, the key is always constant and never variable.

The KEYS are for example: "node", "name", "id", "num" …
but never a variable as "!1234abcd"

[garthvh]

e for example: "node", "name", "id", "num" …
but never a variable as "!1234abcd"

The "!1234abcd" is the user.id value, it is derived by removing the first 4 characters from the MAC address

[mverch67]

The node id is always constant because it is derived from the MAC address. It will never change. This is used as a key in the dictionary (of nodes).

If the nodes would be represented as a JSON list [], then you would see the user.id explicitly (because there is no key), however in a dictionary structure (which is appropriate for upto 80 nodes for performance reasons) the user.id IS the key in the dictionary an can be obtained as stated in my first comment above.