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.

If you know that no filename contains newlines, use jq:

ls | jq -R -s -c 'split("\n")[:-1]'

Short explanation of the flags to jq:

• -R treats the input as string instead of JSON
• -s joins all lines into an array
• -c creates a compact output
• [:-1] removes the last empty string in the output array

This requires version 1.4 or later of jq. Try this if it doesn't work for you:

ls | jq -R '[.]' | jq -s -c 'add'