Programming :: Get And Process Stuff From JSON Encoded Serialized Data String?

I have this JSON encoded data, which I want to efficiently parse (i.e. fast, with minimal system resources). I don't want to use a/the shell any more than necessary.

Here's a snippet of what the raw serial data looks like:

Code:
[{"num":1,"name":"1","visible":false,"focused":false,"rect":{"x":0,"y":0,"width":1680,"height":1050},...blah blah..
So that's fine. I currently have at least two ways of parsing it:

This Perl method (which I don't much care for because I'm not much into Perl, and because the output is not much more useful than the raw form, and imho even more cryptic):

Code:
sasha@reactor: <produce data> | perl -MData::Dumper -MJSON::XS -E 'say Dumper(decode_json <>)'
$VAR1 = [
{
code....

# Which means: at x=1680, draw a 20x20px grey block, then back up -10px and draw a "1" on the block.I figure that the two awk's I've used can be combined into one -- but I began having problems with removing the single quotes if I did it within the awk, which is why I stuck a `tr` in the middle.

I know this sucks. So, if someone has some ideas or thoughts on something else to do with this JSON data, that's less convoluted that where I'm currently going, I'll be happy to hear about it.

PS - I know this whole post is possibly hard to understand -- if you need more info (you mean you're interested in this mess?? )