How to extract all (also nested) key names with jq

Question

How can I extract all key names, even in nested objects with jq? For example, I have json:

{ \"a\": 1, \"b\": { \"c\": 2 } }

and I wa

Answer 1

Short jq solution:

jq -r '[paths | join(".")]'  jsonfile

The output:

[
  "a",
  "b",
  "b.c"
]

---

• paths function outputs the paths to all the elements in its input

• join(".") - to concatenate keys within hierarchical paths