How to Coerce ArrayList([]const u8) to []const u8 | Zig Programming Language | Page 1

I'm attempting to write a JSON parser in Zig. Parsing is going reasonably well but I can't print the structured types out. The issue I'm having is with the nested types "Array" and "Object". I want to return a []const u8 (so I can print it) but I'm running into issues I don't know how to debug.

This is the type I've made:

pub const Value = union(enum) {
    null,
    true,
    false,
    integer: []const u8,
    string: []const u8,
    array: std.ArrayList(Value),
    // object: std.ArrayList(Object),
};

And this is the type to string conversion code.

fn value_to_string(value: Value) []const u8 {
    return switch (value) {
        .false => |_| "false",
        .null => |_| "null",
        .true => |_| "true",
        .integer => |v| v,
        .string => |v| v,
        .array => |vs| {
            const out = array_list_to_string(vs) catch |e| {
                std.debug.panic("some error {s}", .{e});
            };
            return out;
        },
    };
}

fn array_list_to_string(values: std.ArrayList(Value)) Error![][]const u8 {
    var allocator = std.heap.page_allocator;

    var array_list = std.ArrayList([]const u8).init(allocator);

    try array_list.append("[");
    const i = 0;
    for (values.items) |value| {
        if (i > 0) array_list.append(",");
        try array_list.append(value_to_string(value));
    }
    try array_list.append("]");

    return array_list.toOwnedSlice();
}

What I want is a contiguous sequence of bytes. What I have are different sequences of bytes allocated on the heap somewhere. So I'm trying to take this heap allocated array of []u8 and mash them all together into a single, stack allocated []u8 (right?). But I'm having trouble mashing them all together. Am I having trouble because I don't know some technique or is this not an allowable thing and there's a different way to print these heap allocated slices?

I exceeded the character limit so hopefully this is enough context!

#How to Coerce ArrayList([]const u8) to []const u8