Looks interesting, and I like the analysis of JQ's model in order to compare and contrast it with ZQ. It reminds me somewhat of the difference between XPath 1 to XPath 2 - the former worked great if you were selecting stuff and using the built-in functions to do some simple transformations but if you tried to go further it was a hot mess of incompatible types each with their own constraints and quirks. In XPath 2 they completely revised the data model and type system, making everything an atomic value, node or a sequence of values and/or nodes, allowing types to be queried and operated on, and added a ton of useful built-in functions and operators, making impossible queries in XPath 1 possible.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2003/...

Anyway, I've installed ZQ and will look to use it, even my simple usage of JQ had already led to thoughts of writing my own, better version :)

Quick bug report: On the Aggregate Functions page the link to _countdistinct_ goes to the page for _count_, and there actually isn't a page at https://zed.brimdata.io/docs/language/aggregates/countdistin....