Add a flag to output line numbers of location of objects in actual JSON

[bbbco]

I'd like to be able to output the line numbers of the location of objects in the actual JSON. This would be helpful in utilizing gron to make JSON files searchable via reference in command line text editors like VIM (see https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/15682/is-there-a-vim-plugin-available-to-add-jsonpath-jq-jmespath-path-searching ).

I imagine it could output the line numbers inside a javascript comment so as to ensure that the output remains javascript compatible.

json = []; // line 1
json[0] = {}; // line 2
json[0].commit = {}; // line 3
json[0].commit.author = {}; // line 4
json[0].commit.author.date = "2016-07-02T10:51:21Z"; // line 5
json[0].commit.author.email = "mail@tomnomnom.com"; // line 6
json[0].commit.author.name = "Tom Hudson"; // line 7
...

[tomnomnom]

Hi @bbbco! Thank you for raising an issue :)

I like the idea, but I'm not entirely sure how easy it would be to implement. As far as I know, Go's JSON package doesn't deal with 'lines' when decoding JSON - even internally; it only maintains a byte offset as new-line characters don't have any meaning in JSON.

Short of writing my own JSON parser (or copying the parser form the standard library) and tracking the number of new-line characters seen I can't think of a way to do this. Even the byte-offset is only exposed when a parse error is encountered (e.g. when a json.UnmarshalTypeError type is returned).

I'm open to suggestions for good ways to do this if you or anyone else has any!

[bbbco]

Ah yep, I'm sorry, I didn't look at your code. I didn't realize you don't have your own custom JSON parser.

If that's not in the plans, I'll see about looking elsewhere.

Thanks for the great response though!

[tomnomnom]

@bbbco no worries! Sorry I couldn't be more help!

I'll close this for now, but I ever think of a way to do it I'll let you know