Removing backslashes when using Oracle’s JSON_ARRAY function?

How do you get rid of the back slashes, but still keep the double quotes when using json_array?

TABLE A:

 Hospital  Cat    Dog    Lizard   Mouse
 Hosp1            D               M
 Hosp2      C     D       L 
 Hosp3      C     D       L       M

Wrong code:

 select json_array (regexp_replace(
        case when Cat    = 'C' then '"cat",'    end) ||
        case when Dog    = 'D' then '"dog",'    end) ||
        case when Lizard = 'L' then '"lizard",' end) ||
        case when Mouse  = 'M' then '"mouse",'  end,                                                                                                       
    '",$','')
  ) pets from A where Hospital = Hosp2;

Wrong output:

 PETS
 [""cat","dog","lizard"]

Desired output:

 PETS
 ["cat","dog","lizard"]

And yes, I know you can just concatenate like so "select '['|| etc. without using the json_array, but I need to have that in the code. Is there a way to use regexp_replace somehow, to get rid of that ?? Thanks!

Answer

No need for concatenation:

select json_array (
         case when Cat    = 'C' then 'cat'    end,
         case when Dog    = 'D' then 'dog'    end,
         case when Lizard = 'L' then 'lizard' end,
         case when Mouse  = 'M' then 'mouse'  end) as pets 
from A 
where Hospital = 'Hosp2';

Online example