linux - convert bash `ls` output to json array

Question

Is it possible to use a bash script to format the output of the ls to a json array? To be valid json, all names of the dirs and files need to be wrapped in double quotes, seperated by a comma, and the entire thing needs to be wrapped in square brackets. I.e. convert:

jeroen@jeroen-ubuntu:~/Desktop$ ls
foo.txt bar baz

to

[ "foo.txt", "bar", "baz" ]

edit: I strongly prefer something that works across all my Linux servers; hence rather not depend on python, but have a pure bash solution.

Answer 1

Yes, but the corner cases and Unicode handling will drive you up the wall. Better to delegate to a scripting language that supports it natively.

$ ls
あ  a  "a"  à  a b  私
$ python -c 'import os, json; print json.dumps(os.listdir("."))'
["u00e0", ""a"", "u79c1", "a b", "u3042", "a"]