Modify a key-value in a json using jq in-place

Question

I have a json in which I want to modify a particular value but the terminal always displays the json with the modified value but it does not actually change the value in the particular file. Sample json:

{
   name: 'abcd',
   age: 30,
   address: 'abc'
}

I want to change the value of address in the file itself but so far I've been unable to do so. I tried using:

jq '.address = "abcde"' test.json

but it didn't work. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Use a temporary file; it's what any program that claims to do in-place editing is doing.

tmp=$(mktemp)
jq '.address = "abcde"' test.json > "$tmp" && mv "$tmp" test.json

If the address isn't hard-coded, pass the correct address via a jq argument:

address=abcde
jq --arg a "$address" '.address = $a' test.json > "$tmp" && mv "$tmp" test.json