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Q&A Replace leaf arrays with joined strings in a nested structure in jq

Consider the following arbitrarily-nested JSON as input to a jq filter: echo '[{"foo": [1, 2]}, {"bar": [{"baz": ["foo", "baz"]}]}]' | jq '.' My goal is to join leaf arrays into strings: [{"fo...

1 answer  ·  posted 8mo ago by ggorlen‭  ·  edited 8mo ago by ggorlen‭

Question json jq
#6: History hidden by user avatar ggorlen‭ · 2023-09-10T15:32:14Z (8 months ago)
Detailed history before this event is hidden because of a redaction.
Replace leaf arrays with joined strings in a nested structure in jq
Consider the following arbitrarily-nested JSON as input to a jq filter:

```bash
echo '[{"foo": [1, 2]}, {"bar": [{"baz": ["foo", "baz"]}]}]' | jq '.'
```

My goal is to join leaf arrays into strings:

```json
[{"foo": "12"}, {"bar": [{"baz": "foobaz"}]}]
```

The following filter produces the above output:

```jq
walk(if type == "array" and
       all(type != "array" and type != "object")
       then join("") else . end)
```

But if I use this filter on an array-only structure like

```json
[[1, 2], [[3, 4], [[5, 6], [7]]]]
```

I get:

```json
"1234567"
```

Instead of the expected

```json
["12", ["34", ["56", "7"]]]
```

Instead of replacing the leaf arrays with strings, it's reduced the nested structure down to a single string!

If I change my filter to

```jq
walk(if type == "array" and
       all(type != "array" and type != "object")
       then [join("")] else . end)
```

At least the expected structure is preserved, but now the inner strings have an extra single-element array that shouldn't be there:

```json
[["12"], [["34"], [["56"], ["7"]]]]
```

It's not feasible to strip off these single-element arrays after the fact, since a second pass won't differentiate a single-element array that's supposed to be there from a temporary artificial one. I suppose I could add some metadata to enable second-pass differentiation, but this seems messy to code and hacky. I feel like there should be a simple, direct solution.

I also tried changing my `if` branch to `. = join("")` and `. |= join("")`, but these give me the same old `"1234567"`.

How can I reliably join leaf arrays to strings in an arbitrarily-nested structure in-place, without modifying the structure? Why is `walk` flattening arrays but not objects here, anyway?
#5: Post edited by user avatar ggorlen‭ · 2023-09-10T15:32:14Z (8 months ago)
Roll back poor edit that uses incorrect markdown bulleting and messes with my original style intent

The detailed changes of this event are hidden because of a redaction.

#4: Post edited by user avatar meta user‭ · 2023-09-09T18:22:17Z (8 months ago)
used "bullets formatting", added headings

The detailed changes of this event are hidden because of a redaction.

#3: Post edited by user avatar Alexei‭ · 2023-09-04T06:22:42Z (8 months ago)
added relevant tag

The detailed changes of this event are hidden because of a redaction.

#2: Post edited by user avatar ggorlen‭ · 2023-09-03T23:15:31Z (8 months ago)
clarify

The detailed changes of this event are hidden because of a redaction.

#1: Initial revision by user avatar ggorlen‭ · 2023-09-03T23:11:22Z (8 months ago)

The detailed changes of this event are hidden because of a redaction.