Your only problem was that the script passed to jq was quoted incorrectly.
In your particular case, using a single double-quoted string with embedded \-escaped " instances is probably simplest:
jq -r ".global.name = \"$INPUT\"" "$CONF_FILE" > tmp.$$.json && mv tmp.$$.json "$CONF_FILE"
Generally, however, chepner's helpful answer shows a more robust alternative to embedding the shell variable reference directly in the script: Using the --arg option to pass a value as a jq variable allows single-quoting the script, which is preferable, because it avoids confusion over what elements are expanded by the shell up front and obviates the need for escaping $ instances that should be passed through to jq.
Also:
- Just
= is sufficient to assign the value; while |=, the so-called update operator, works too, it behaves the same as = in this instance, because the RHS is a literal, not an expression referencing the LHS - see the manual.
- You should routinely double-quote your shell-variable references and you should avoid use of all-uppercase variable names in order to avoid conflicts with environment variables and special shell variables.
As for why your quoting didn't work:
'.global.name |= '""$INPUT"" is composed of the following tokens:
- String literal
.global.name |= (due to single-quoting)
- String literal
"" - i.e., the empty string - the quotes will be removed by the shell before jq sees the script
- An unquoted reference to variable
$INPUT (which makes its value subject to word-splitting and globbing).
- Another instance of literal
"".
With your sample value, jq ended up seeing the following string as its script:
.global.name |= dsa
As you can see, the double quotes are missing, causing jq to interpret dsa as a function name rather than a string literal, and since no argument was passed to (non-existent) function dsa, jq's error message referenced it as dsa/0 - a function with no (0) arguments.
