> AFAIK, JSON was designed for Javascript in a web browser It wasn't. It was _inspired_ by JS's syntax (and that of Python), but wasn't designed for it. Crockf

> AFAIK, JSON was designed for Javascript in a web browser It wasn't. It was _inspired_ by JS's syntax (and that of Python), but wasn't designed for it. Crockford designed it as a lightweight data exchange format that used a familiar syntax. Quoting from the json.org website itself: > JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is easy for humans to read and write. It is easy for machines to parse and generate. It is based on a subset of the JavaScript Programming Language Standard ECMA-262 3rd Edition - December 1999. JSON is a text format that is completely language independent but uses conventions that are familiar to programmers of the C-family of languages, including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, and many others. These properties make JSON an ideal data-interchange language. JSON isn't terribly difficult to parse, nor does it require "generous amounts of memory". Shy of something like s-expressions, it's about as straightforward as you can get when it comes to structured data. Netstrings are really useful but they encode strings, not structured data.