These flags are available for all yq commands.

Color

By default, yq prints with colours if it detects a terminal. You can manully this by using either

The --colors/-Cflag to force print with colors.

The `--no-colors/-M flag to force print without colours

Pretty Print

To print out idiomatic yaml use the --prettyPrint/-P flag. Note that this is shorthand for using the style operator ... style=""

Indent

Use the indent flag --indent/-I to control the number of spaces used for indentation. This also works for JSON output. The default value is 2.

Note that lists are indented at the same level as the map key at indent level 2, but are more deeply indented at indent level 4 and greater. This is (currently) a quirk of the underlying yaml parser.

Given:

apples:
  collection:
  - name: Green
  - name: Blue
  favourite: Pink Lady

Then:

yq e -I4 sample.yaml

Will print out:

apples:
    collection:
      - name: Green
      - name: Blue
    favourite: Pink Lady

This also works with json

yq e -j -I4 sample.yaml

yields

{
    "apples": {
        "collection": [
            {
                "name": "Green"
            },
            {
                "name": "Blue"
            }
        ],
        "favourite": "Pink Lady"
    }
}

Unwrap scalars

By default scalar values are 'unwrapped', that is only their value is printed (except when outputting as JSON). To print out the node as-is, with the original formatting an any comments pass in --unwrapScalar=false

Given data.yml:

a: "Things" # cool stuff

Then:

yq e --unwrapScalar=false '.a' data.yml

Will yield:

"Things" # cool stuff

where as without setting the flag to false you would get:

Things

​