converting lines to json in bash

I was also trying to convert a bunch of lines into a JSON array, and was at a standstill until I realized that -s was the only way I could handle more than one line at a time in the jq expression, even if that meant I’d have to parse the newlines manually.

jq -R -s -c 'split("\n")' < just_lines.txt

• -R to read raw input
• -s to read all input as a single string
• -c to not pretty print the output

Easy peasy.

Edit: I’m on jq ≥ 1.4, which is apparently when the split built-in was introduced.