Re: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2933126/what-are-good-cli-tools-for-json/14132863?noredirect=1#comment34568239_14132863

example.md

curl --silent https://gist.githubusercontent.com/tingletech/9823267/raw/163e5494fb0f2abe228a959ccd66e8bcb75a7c75/jq.json \
  | jq ".[0].from_user"
"_AaronNg"

It is still quoted, sure, but that has not stopped me from using the output in scripts / xargs.

jq.json

[
  {
    "text": "RT @imagemechanics: iPhone 5 website teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas>.\nhttp://t.co/XRvh1ZVw",
    "from_user": "_AaronNg"
  },
  {
    "text": "RT @_kud: iPhone 5 website teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas> -- http://t.co/Lhp92IqD",
    "from_user": "blouerat"
  },
  {
    "text": "Dynamic Forms Mobile App by pmadiset: Few Forms details are hosted on our server in the form of JSON. This JSON ... http://t.co/7KALdWaX",
    "from_user": "cebu_iphone"
  },
  {
    "text": "iPhone 5 website insanity - Video compressing using JPEG, JSON, and <canvas> http://t.co/28Jesbio (Oh #Apple, U So #Awesome...)",
    "from_user": "dieswaytoofast"
  },
  {
    "text": "RT @umutm: A very nice web-based JSON editor - http://t.co/M70snaIf",
    "from_user": "Leolik"
  }
]

Thanks for this

You can use the -r argument for removing the quotes:
curl --silent https://gist.githubusercontent.com/tingletech/9823267/raw/163e5494fb0f2abe228a959ccd66e8bcb75a7c75/jq.json | jq -r ".[0].from_user"