Question

tried using the following but it’s not the solution

controller:

var list = new [] { "one", "two", "three" };
ViewData["List"] = javaScriptSerializer.Serialize(list);

jquery:

var list = [ '@ViewData["List"]' ];
$("#numbers").autocomplete({
    source: list
});

Answer 1

In your page (presumably razor, based on your syntax), declare your list as so:

var list = @Html.Raw(ViewData["List"]);

In your current implementation the HtmlHelper is encoding your string to display correctly in a webpage, which you obviously do not want (hence the use of HtmlHelper.Raw) and you are also nesting an array within an array.