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Thanks for your analysis (and the Ruby and JS reports). The more I think about it the more I think parsers should not parse to numbers by default, but instead t

Thanks for your analysis (and the Ruby and JS reports). The more I think about it the more I think parsers should not parse to numbers by default, but instead to (using a Haskell-based pseudo type): data Sign = Positive | Negative data Digit = Zero | One ... Eight | Nine data JSONNumber = JSONNumber { _sign :: Maybe Sign , _integerPart :: [Digit] , _fractionalPart :: Maybe [Digit] } Actually this should include exponents as well -- basically parsers should just report exactly what the spec allows, without coercing to float or whatever. Of course, users of the parsers could ask to have a number converted to a float, but that wouldn't be the default. We're a long way from that though. At the moment I don't even feel like I can write a protocol that expected implementations to distinguish `1` and `1.0`. This should not be the case.

inimino 10y ago
> At the moment I don't even feel like I can write a protocol that expected implementations to distinguish `1` and `1.0`. Indeed you can't, among other reasons because that distinction doesn't exist in JavaScript, but ... why would you want to make such a subtle distinction? If you really want what you described above, you can get it by using a string.
- seagreen 10y ago
  I respect the pragmatism of your reply. At the same time "distinguish decimals and integers" is about as far from a subtle distinction as you can get.
  - inimino 10y ago
    The distinction may be familiar to us, but if you ask someone on the street, "1" and "1.0" are the same number. The habit we have of giving them different types is somewhat arbitrary.
int_19h 10y ago
It sounds like what you're saying is that it should be deserialized as Java's BigDecimal, or whatever the equivalent of that is in a given/language framework; and if there isn't one, then the JSON parser should provide that equivalent.

inimino 10y ago

> At the moment I don't even feel like I can write a protocol that expected implementations to distinguish `1` and `1.0`. Indeed you can't, among other reasons because that distinction doesn't exist in JavaScript, but ... why would you want to make such a subtle distinction? If you really want what you described above, you can get it by using a string.

seagreen 10y ago
I respect the pragmatism of your reply. At the same time "distinguish decimals and integers" is about as far from a subtle distinction as you can get.
- inimino 10y ago
  The distinction may be familiar to us, but if you ask someone on the street, "1" and "1.0" are the same number. The habit we have of giving them different types is somewhat arbitrary.

int_19h 10y ago

It sounds like what you're saying is that it should be deserialized as Java's BigDecimal, or whatever the equivalent of that is in a given/language framework; and if there isn't one, then the JSON parser should provide that equivalent.