Re: [JSON] Constraining JSON serialization discussion

From: Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
Subject: Re: [JSON] Constraining JSON serialization discussion
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2011 10:38:32 -0500

> On 03/24/2011 11:19 PM, Peter Frederick Patel-Schneider wrote:

[...]

>> This doesn't have to be anything
>> fancy, by the way, but I remain astonished that there is not some
>> generally-agreed-on language-independent notion of what JSON is supposed
>> to map to.
> 
> This is good enough for me:
> 
> """
> JSON is built on two structures:
> 
> * A collection of name/value pairs. In various languages, this is
>   realized as an object, record, struct, dictionary, hash table, keyed
>   list, or associative array.
> * An ordered list of values. In most languages, this is realized as an
>   array, vector, list, or sequence.
> """
> 
> Why is it not good enough for you?

Well, I had thought that this was good enough (modulo discussion of
strings, numbers, true, false, null), but even before I started digging
WG discussions indicated to me that it was not nearly adequate.  As I
asked more and more questions, the situation just became more and more
complex, and it quickly seemed that I needed to understand all of
JavaScript to understand JSON, which seemed very broken to me.

Now of course, Richard has helpfully put together a very nice capsule
summary that appears to capture just about everything about the meaning
of JSON.   It's not quite finished, but maybe the WG could get it
whipped into shape in a day or two.

peter

Received on Friday, 25 March 2011 16:56:40 UTC