DTrace Now Able to Parse JSON Strings

This post originally appeared at blog.sysmgr.org. This is the first appearance on Joyeur from our new software engineer Joshua M. Clulow. He is already a great contributor to illumos, SmartOS, and open source DTrace.

In August of this year I jumped on a plane and moved from Australia to San Francisco to work for Joyent. It's been busy and exciting, from learning about a new city to finding my stride in a new role. I thought I'd take a moment to talk about a new DTrace feature that I just added to illumos-joyent, the core of our SmartOS operating system!

When Bryan Cantrill suggested that we should provide a subroutine for JSON parsing in DTrace my interest was immediately piqued. The challenge of writing a compact, bespoke JSON parser to operating in the tightly restricted environment that is DTrace probe context was a rewarding one. The strict, well-defined nature of the JSON specification was an immediate and welcome asset in completing this work, which I [recently] put back.

Click here to read the rest of this post, and see an example script



Post written by joyentlindsay