Using jq to parse and display multiple fields in a json serially

Question

I have this Json

{     "users": [         {             "first": "Stevie",             "last": "Wonder"         },         {             "first": "Michael",             "last": "Jackson"         }     ] } 

Using jq I'd like to display first and last name serially. Like so -

Stevie Wonder Michael Jackson 

This is how far I have gotten -

jq '.users[].first, .users[].last' 

But it displays

"Stevie" "Michael" "Wonder" "Jackson" 

Notice the following:

1. The double quotes that I do not want.
2. The carriage return that I do not want.
3. It's jumbled up. My query displays all the first names first, and then all the last names. However, I want first-last, first-last pair.

Answer 1

I recommend using String Interpolation:

jq '.users[] | "\(.first) \(.last)"' 

We are piping down the result of .users[] to generate the string ".first .last" using string interpolation. \(foo) syntax is used for string interpolation in jq. So, for the above example, it becomes "Stevie Wonder" (".users[].first .users[].second" working elementwise) and "Michael Jackson".

jq reference: String interpolation

Answer 2

You can use addition to concatenate strings.

Strings are added by being joined into a larger string.

jq '.users[] | .first + " " + .last' 

The above works when both first and last are string. If you are extracting different datatypes(number and string), then we need to convert to equivalent types. Referring to solution on this question. For example.

jq '.users[] | .first + " " + (.number|tostring)'