And how is it different from, let us say, the current's sweetheart, JSON? (The comparison is not exclusive to JSON, though.) JavsScript Object Notation makes a

And how is it different from, let us say, the current's sweetheart, JSON? (The comparison is not exclusive to JSON, though.) JavsScript Object Notation makes a lot of sense to describe... The JavaScript objects. But, nowadays, I see it universally applied. As a recent personal experience, I had to use it to serialise communication between a C++ and a Java application---two statically typed languages, with basic types similar among each other but different from JavaScript. To set the contract between the two applications, I had to write a JSON spec [1], which is written in... JSON. That was an abstruse and abusive use of JSON, in my opinion. Then comes `jq` and its own notation, in which I suffer to do the basics of a simple XPath---e.g., return all the objects of a certain kind (i.e., a tag) in any level you find it. Abuse happens [2] because there is a human behind it, especially under the lens of the adage "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". The problem I see in this discussion is that people either want a "magic tool" that works at all cases, or they want to control the human behind it. In my experience, it is difficult to get both: generality does not play well with constraint. --- <digression> I think most people just need to use a plain-text format [4] for most of the things they want, à lá RFC 822 [5]. </digression> --- [1]: http://json-schema.org/ http://json-schema.org/ [2]: I believe this is a Fibonacci series: https://www.xorpd.net/pages/xchg_rax/snip_01.html https://www.xorpd.net/pages/xchg_rax/snip_01.html [3]: http://blog.aerojockey.com/post/iocccsim http://blog.aerojockey.com/post/iocccsim [4]: https://www.arp242.net/the-art-of-unix-programming/#id2907428 https://www.arp242.net/the-art-of-unix-programming/#id290742... [5]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc822 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc822