yq/pkg/yqlib/doc/recursive-descent-glob.md

Recursive Descent (Glob)

This operator recursively matches (or globs) all children nodes given of a particular element, including that node itself. This is most often used to apply a filter recursively against all matches. It can be used in either the

match values form ..

This will, like the jq equivalent, recursively match all value nodes. Use it to find/manipulate particular values.

For instance to set the style of all value nodes in a yaml doc, excluding map keys:

yq eval '.. style= "flow"' file.yaml

match values and map keys form ...

The also includes map keys in the results set. This is particularly useful in YAML as unlike JSON, map keys can have their own styling, tags and use anchors and aliases.

For instance to set the style of all nodes in a yaml doc, including the map keys:

yq eval '... style= "flow"' file.yaml

Recurse map (values only)

Given a sample.yml file of:

a: frog

then

yq eval '..' sample.yml

will output

a: frog
frog

Recursively find nodes with keys

Note that this example has wrapped the expression in [] to show that there are two matches returned. You do not have to wrap in [] in your path expression.

Given a sample.yml file of:

a:
  name: frog
  b:
    name: blog
    age: 12

then

yq eval '[.. | select(has("name"))]' sample.yml

will output

- name: frog
  b:
    name: blog
    age: 12
- name: blog
  age: 12

Recursively find nodes with values

Given a sample.yml file of:

a:
  nameA: frog
  b:
    nameB: frog
    age: 12

then

yq eval '.. | select(. == "frog")' sample.yml

will output

frog
frog

Recurse map (values and keys)

Note that the map key appears in the results

Given a sample.yml file of:

a: frog

then

yq eval '...' sample.yml

will output

a: frog
a
frog

Aliases are not traversed

Given a sample.yml file of:

a: &cat
  c: frog
b: *cat

then

yq eval '[..]' sample.yml

will output

- a: &cat
    c: frog
  b: *cat
- &cat
  c: frog
- frog
- *cat

Merge docs are not traversed

Given a sample.yml file of:

foo: &foo
  a: foo_a
  thing: foo_thing
  c: foo_c
bar: &bar
  b: bar_b
  thing: bar_thing
  c: bar_c
foobarList:
  b: foobarList_b
  !!merge <<:
    - *foo
    - *bar
  c: foobarList_c
foobar:
  c: foobar_c
  !!merge <<: *foo
  thing: foobar_thing

then

yq eval '.foobar | [..]' sample.yml

will output

- c: foobar_c
  !!merge <<: *foo
  thing: foobar_thing
- foobar_c
- *foo
- foobar_thing