Remove deprecated --argfile option

[itchyny]

The --argfile option has been documented as Do not use. since jq 1.5. It has been 8 years, so let's remove this.

[wader]

Oh never used i think but assumed it was like --raw-file but is more like --argjsonarrayfirst?

[wader]

Is there some good compatibility argument for keeping it?

[nicowilliams]

Thanks!

[pkoppstein]

@wader asked:

Is there some good compatibility argument for keeping it?

Yes, I believe so, mainly because (a) it's all over the internets (google counts 3,260 pages) and (b) there isn't yet a good substitute (e.g. --slurpfile always slurps).

Part of the reason it's been in limbo so long is that there has been some hope that jq's I/O functionality would be significantly overhauled, at which time --argfile would die a natural death.

Anyway, in my opinion, it would have been better to leave it in for 1.7; in fact, maybe it's not too late to revert this particular commit???? @nicowilliams? @itchyny?

[nicowilliams]

@pkoppstein it's been removed. It will stay removed. There was a deprecation warning for a long time. People will adjust.

[philpax]

For anyone else coming across this PR who needs to update their existing scripts, and are OK with subpar performance: you can replace --argfile with --slurpfile and index into the resulting array.

Here's an example:

jq -c '{ title, comments: $comments[.name] }' --argfile comments "comments.ndjson" "submissions.ndjson" > output.ndjson

should become

jq -c '{ title, comments: ($comments[0][.name]) }' --slurpfile comments "comments.ndjson" "submissions.ndjson" > output.ndjson

This may not be sufficient for your use case, or there may be better ways of doing it, but this got me back up and running.