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XML is actually very hairy and complicated. Consider entity encoding, whitespace (as in xml:space="preserve"), and namespaces. In contrast, the complete syntax
by RodgerTheGreat 16y ago
XML is actually very hairy and complicated. Consider entity encoding, whitespace (as in xml:space="preserve"), and namespaces. In contrast, the complete syntax of JSON is given in 5 simple flowcharts: http://json.org/ http://json.org/
Nearly any competent programmer could hand-roll a tested, production-ready JSON parser in under a week. Try doing the same with XML. In practice there are plenty of JSON parsers out there to choose from, but being able to completely wrap your head around something is useful.
- dkarl 16y agoI upvoted your comment for the info, but I have no idea why this is an advantage for anyone except the handful of people who create an implementation. Hand-rolling an XML parser is a pretty sure sign of a certain kind of incompetence. Wouldn't the same be true of hand-rolling a JSON parser, unless you're one of the (rare) first guys to solve the problem for your language or language platform? To put it another way, wouldn't this only have been an advantage before XML libraries became commonplace? The last time I reached for an XML library and found there was none already installed with my platform, I was using Tcl (and it wasn't hard to find TclXML.)