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> Given that that's its main value proposition, what exactly is the reason for saying that JSON-as-data-format should not have comments? What do we lose if we a

> Given that that's its main value proposition, what exactly is the reason for saying that JSON-as-data-format should not have comments? What do we lose if we allow them? Because JSON originally did have comments, and people were putting pragmas into them, and so different parsers would act different depending on whether they understood them or not. Comments ended up being an anti-feature in JSON because people were abusing them. Source: > I removed comments from JSON because I saw people were using them to hold parsing directives, a practice which would have destroyed interoperability. I know that the lack of comments makes some people sad, but it shouldn't. […] * https://web.archive.org/web/20190112173904/https://plus.google.com/118095276221607585885/posts/RK8qyGVaGSr https://web.archive.org/web/20190112173904/https://plus.goog...

tom_ 2y ago
What are some examples of people doing this?
Cpoll 2y ago
I don't buy it, what's stopping people from putting pragmas in key:value pairs? There's a chance of collision, but you're already deciding to sacrifice interoperability, so just accept that the myJson spec says '___declare___' is a reserved key.
- jakeogh 2y ago
  If I parse json, I dont want to lose data. Having the parser read the comments (however they are, as long as they are in spec and therefore read by the parser) is a good thing. Having to parse the file again, with a fuzzy out-of-spec system (looking for comments) is clearly worse. The whole point of json is to serialize stuff, breaking that to insert non-machine readable comments makes the spec less reliable.
staz 2y ago
You cut the rest of his comment > Suppose you are using JSON to keep configuration files, which you would like to annotate. Go ahead and insert all the comments you like. Then pipe it through JSMin before handing it to your JSON parser. Doesn't seems he is that against the idea

tom_ 2y ago

What are some examples of people doing this?

Cpoll 2y ago

I don't buy it, what's stopping people from putting pragmas in key:value pairs? There's a chance of collision, but you're already deciding to sacrifice interoperability, so just accept that the myJson spec says '___declare___' is a reserved key.

jakeogh 2y ago
If I parse json, I dont want to lose data. Having the parser read the comments (however they are, as long as they are in spec and therefore read by the parser) is a good thing. Having to parse the file again, with a fuzzy out-of-spec system (looking for comments) is clearly worse. The whole point of json is to serialize stuff, breaking that to insert non-machine readable comments makes the spec less reliable.

staz 2y ago

You cut the rest of his comment > Suppose you are using JSON to keep configuration files, which you would like to annotate. Go ahead and insert all the comments you like. Then pipe it through JSMin before handing it to your JSON parser. Doesn't seems he is that against the idea