Presto! You have a duplicate key in the first example. Also... print (json.dumps(json.loads(js_data), indent=2)) { "bar": false, "foo": true,

Presto! You have a duplicate key in the first example. Also... print (json.dumps(json.loads(js_data), indent=2)) { "bar": false, "foo": true, "# A multiline..": "", "# .. bar variable": "", "# A foo variable": "" } Presto! ;-)