Re: Object vs string representation of arguments (Re: Mozilla/Cisco API Proposal)

>> 
> I agree that the choice of data model and the choice of data representation are somewhat orthogonal.
> However, I disagree with sequencing them.
> 
> We currently have people doing implementation / experimentation work. They need to implement something, and if they are to achieve interoperability in the test phase, they have to implement the same "something".
> 
> After 20 years of doing ad-hoc string parsers (I wrote the first-ever ABNF grammar validator), I'm getting tired of making more ad-hoc structures for representing lists of values, some of which contain lists of values, some of which have special delimiters, some of which have different charset limitations to avoid the delimiters, some of which have quoting conventions.... and the (high) risk that you impose high parsing costs at arbitrary points in your implementation.
> 
> JSON objects seem to me like a chance to get an easily definable format with enough expressive power and a single, context-independent string representation *if* stringifying is needed. For arguments that are more than tokens, I want to see a strong argument for why yet-another-string-parser is a better choice than a JSON object.
> 
>                       Harald
> 

+1

Received on Wednesday, 13 July 2011 14:38:18 UTC