>parses large documents slowly, but steadily, in memory space proportional to the key depth of the document

If parsing JSON with shell scripts and awk is your idea of the most ideal way to "slowly, but steadily" get the job done.

https://github.com/shellbound/jwalk/blob/master/lib/jwalk/co...

I know that everything looks like a nail if your only tool is a hammer, and it's fun to nail together square wheels out of plywood, but there are actually other tools out there with built-in, compiled, optimized, documented, tested, well maintained, fully compliant JSON parsers.

CRUSH looks interesting, but you’ll have to poke around to find out what the tool(s) can do:

https://github.com/google/crush-tools/blob/wiki/CrushTutoria...

Gron -- Make JSON Greppable https://github.com/TomNomNom/gron