arrays unexpectedly wrapping return values

[wxgeorge]

This gem seems to deviate from the jq binary with regards to the return type of certain queries. Specifically, arrays are wrapping the return value in a number of situations.

Line 22 of spec/jq_spec.rb has

expect(JQ('"Zzz"').search('.')).to eq(['Zzz'])

But running the same query with the jq binary gives

echo '"Zzz"' | jq '.'
# "Zzz"

Why is the addition of the array the appropriate behaviour?

[wxgeorge]

(jq is an awesome tool, and I'm very happy this gem exists - 🙏 thank you @winebarrel! - and I'd very like to use it in my projects, I just can't make sense of this behaviour ...)

[voke]

I guess it's because jq can produce multiple outputs and will print a newline after each output.

echo '["foo", "bar"]' | jq '.[] | ascii_upcase'

Result:

"FOO"
"BAR"

---

JQ('["foo", "bar"]').search('.[] | ascii_upcase')

Result:

["FOO", "BAR"]