How to run jq from gitbash in windows?

Easiest solution and always latest version:

---

run this curl in your gitbash:

curl -L -o /usr/bin/jq.exe https://github.com/stedolan/jq/releases/latest/download/jq-win64.exe

or manually save the jq-win64.exe in link above as jq.exe to your /usr/bin (which is in your git bash installation folder)

(if you are behind a proxy add the -x proxyhost:port)

I hate answers that say you need another to use another tool to download, but using https://chocolatey.org/ made this incredibly simple for me.

From an elevated command-prompt, run:

choco install jq

jq magically works from bash going forward.

Using jq-win64.exe from github.com/stedolan/jq/releases, I get

vonc@voncav MINGW64 /d/prgs/dl
$ ./jq-win64.exe --version
jq-1.6

vonc@voncav MINGW64 /d/prgs/dl
$ echo '{"foo": 0}' | ./jq-win64.exe .
{
  "foo": 0
}

So it does work, but it then depends on the json document you are parsing with it.
If that json document is not well-formed, that would generate the error you see.

In your bash session, you can define (or add to your ~/.bashrc) an alias:

alias jq=/path/to/jq-win64.exe

That way, you don't need to use ./jq, but directly jq.

$ echo '{"foo": 0}' | jq

In my case:

vonc@voncav:/$ alias jq=/mnt/d/dwnl/jq-win64.exe
vonc@voncav:/$ echo '{"foo": 0}' | jq
{
  "foo": 0
}