4 ms·
JSON is not a textual format. What it is, is right there in the name: It's an Object Notation. Now, JSON objects are most frequently serialized to text, but the
by throwawaykf05 11y ago
JSON is not a textual format. What it is, is right there in the name: It's an Object Notation. Now, JSON objects are most frequently serialized to text, but they are still objects. The format is an orthogonal matter.
- icebraining 11y agoThe "notation" part is the serialization. JSON is a "system of written symbols used to represent" objects.
- espadrine 11y agoLet me cite you json.org: > JSON is a text format json.org is owned by Douglas Crockford, who should know what JSON is, since he was the first to specify that format.
- nailer 11y agoAgreed, but nobody uses it without parsing it. You're not grepping JSON, you're JSON.parse() ing it.
- espadrine 11y agoWhy does it matter whether the exchange format is a regular or a context-free language? It is a textual representation of binary data either way. Sure, it is harder to pattern-match context-free, and we have a convenient syntax for textual regular languages, but we create tools such as jq so that we can pipe JSON and extract data.