Is there a name for how console.log formats the Json object?

Question

When a json object is printed, for ex in a script executed by node using console.log, it does not fully pretty print the json. It kind of takes middle ground and prints as few lines as possible without losing much in terms of readability.

I was wondering if there is any name for this formatting or an algorithm. I want to implement this formatting in other languages.

Answer 1

console.log in Node.js is basically this:

(value, ...args) => process.stdout.write(util.format(value, ...args) + '\n')

From the documentation on util.format :

If the first argument is not a string then util.format() returns a string that is the concatenation of all arguments separated by spaces. Each argument is converted to a string using util.inspect() .

^{- https://nodejs.org/api/util.html#util_util_format_format_args}

Which means that console.log(object) is equivalent to:

> process.stdout.write(util.inspect(object) + '\n');

From the documentation on util.inspect :

The util.inspect() method returns a string representation of object that is intended for debugging. The output of util.inspect may change at any time and should not be depended upon programmatically. Additional options may be passed that alter certain aspects of the formatted string. util.inspect() will use the constructor's name and/or @@toStringTag to make an identifiable tag for an inspected value.

^{- https://nodejs.org/api/util.html#util_util_inspect_object_showhidden_depth_colors}

As far as I can tell there is no "name" for the default formatting settings of util.inspect , other than "compact" as mentioned (a boolean option that is set to true by default) by the util.inspect documentation.