Using JSON_MODIFY To Modify Existing JSON

Recently I found this question on stack overflow. The problem was in appending a new JSON object to the existing JSON array:

UPDATE TheTable
SET TheJSON = JSON_MODIFY(TheJSON, 'append $', N'{"id": 3, "name": "Three"}')
WHERE Condition = 1;

JSON_MODIFY function should take the array value from TheJSON column (the first argument), append the third argument into the first argument, and write the appended array back in TheJSON column.

However, the unexpected results in this case is the fact that JSON_MODIFY didn’t appended a JSON object {"id": 3, "name": "Three"}to the array. Instead, JSON_MODIFY appended a new JSON string literal  "{\"id\": 3, \"name\": \"Three\"}" to the end of the array.

This might be surprising result if you don’t know how JSON_MODIFY function works.