Qfyilyi

I have a first json file like this:

{

  "env_vars": {

    "TERRAFORM_CFG_TLS_CERT": "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----\nMIIIqzCCB5O"

  }

}

If I use the command:

echo <file> | jq -r '.env_vars'

The result is as expected (the backslash are still there):

{

  "TERRAFORM_CFG_TLS_CERT": "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----\nMIIIqzCCB5O"

}

But if i execute this command:

cat <file> | jq -r '.env_vars' | jq -r 'keys as $k | "($k)="(.[$k])""'

The result is:

TERRAFORM_CFG_TLS_CERT: "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----nMIIIqzCCB5O"

=> One backslash has been removed... why ?
How to avoid this ?

Thanks.

Using the -r option tells jq to "translate" the JSON string into a "raw" string by interpreting the characters that are special to JSON (see e.g. http://json.org). Thus, following the [mcve] guidelines a bit more closely, we could start with:

$ jq . <<< '"X\nY"'

"X\nY"



$ jq -r . <<< '"X\nY"'

XnY

If you check the json.org specification of strings, you'll see this is exactly correct.

So if for some reason you want each occurrence of \ in the JSON string to be replaced by two backslash characters (i.e. JSON: "\\"), you could use sub or gsub. That's a bit tricky, because the first argument of these functions is a regex. Behold:

$ jq -r 'gsub("\\"; "\\")' <<< '"X\nY"'

X\nY

You should output the string as json to preserve the escapes. By taking a string and outputting it raw, you're getting exactly what that string was, a literal backslash followed by an n.

$ ... | jq -r '.env_vars | to_entries | "(.key): (.value | tojson)"'

If any of the values are non-strings, add a tostring to the filter.