I propose adding a command line `--minify` flag to the json/tool.py module. 

This flag, if specified, uses `indent=None` and `separators=(',', ':')` to eliminate indent and separator whitespace in the output.

Minifying JSON (as is also done frequently with JS, CSS, and sometimes HTML) is common practice, and would be useful to have as a command-line tool rather than a user needing to use an online resource to do so.

-0

ISTM that minifying isn't something one usually does with a command-line tool.  Instead, it is part of the program generating JSON in the first place.  IOW, minification is useful in the standard library but not a part of json.tool which normally used a a pretty printer (perhaps to *undo* someone else's minification).

Since, as you point out, json.tool is made for convenience, I see the reverse of pretty-printing (minifying) being just as convenient:

$ cat > expanded.json <<EOF
> {
>     "foo": "bar",
>     "json": "obj"
> }
> EOF
$ ./python.exe -m json.tool --minify expanded.json minf.json
$ cat minf.json 
{"foo":"bar","json":"obj"}

json.tool produces more readable representation. Your option is opposite to this purpose.

> json.tool produces more readable representation. Your option is opposite to this purpose.

That is correct, though I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.  The purpose of minifying isn't to make the input more readable; it's to condense it in the interest of sending fewer bytes over a network.  Unless I'm missing something, json.tool doesn't have the single express purpose of prettifying, since it also serves to be a validator as stated in its help message.  This is just aadding another commonly-sought option.

Brad, thank you for the suggestion, but our goals for this tool are somewhat limited, so I'm going to close this as being out of scope for the intended purpose of json.tool.

If some other core developer wants to champion this, feel free to re-open.