gawk script to flatten and read a javascript object, built for a small use case that involved reading a node.js package.json

json.awk

#!/usr/bin/gawk -f

 BEGIN {
  RS="(\"*[[:alnum:]*]\"[ \t]*:[ \t]*)?\"*[ \t]*(,|{)+[ \t]*|\n[ \t]+\"|(\"[[:alnum:]*]\"[ \t]*:[ \t]*)?{|\"+[\n]+";
  FS="\"[ \t]*:[ \t]*|\"?[ \t]*:[ \t]*\"";

  column_format ="|    %-39s";

  cols = 0; rows = 0;

  h_line="----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------";
  header_format="%89s\n%-36sSimple JSON Parser%36s\n%89s\n";
  footer_format="%89s\n|%44s%-44s|\n%89s\n";
  printf header_format, h_line, "|", "|",h_line
}
NF > 1 {
  for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) {
    printf column_format, $i
  };
  cols = (NF > cols) ? NF : cols;
  rows = rows + 1;
  printf " |\n"
}
END {

  footer_message=(cols " columns in " rows " rows ");

  halfLength=length(footer_message)/2;
  sOne=substr(footer_message,1, halfLength);
  sTwo=substr(footer_message,halfLength+1, halfLength*2);

  printf footer_format, h_line, sOne, sTwo ,h_line
}