jq: Delete an element from an array
When working with JSON data, I typically use jq to mangle the data. I keep this post as a reference for myself on how to remove an element from a JSON list or array using jq.
Given we have the following array:
$ echo '{"hello": "world", "myarray": ["a", "b", "c"]}' | jq
{
"hello": "world",
"myarray": [
"a",
"b",
"c"
]
}To remove an element from the array, use the del function with the select function to select a single element:
jq 'del(.myarray[] | select(. == "b"))'So when applying this to the above array, we can remove “b” from the array like so:
$ echo '{"hello": "world", "myarray": ["a", "b", "c"]}' | jq 'del(.myarray[] | select(. == "b"))'
{
"hello": "world",
"myarray": [
"a",
"c"
]
}