Other JSON Impression

[elephant]

This is something that struck me as odd years ago when I first saw JSON. It's a key=value format but what was weird to me was the use of double-quotes around the key name.

"key":"value";

instead of

key:"value";

There's a tiny bit of wasted space in those quotes. That's a major quirk, I think. One thousand fields with two thousand bytes of wasted space.

One thing that I think JSON does well is properly represent arrays with square brackets [ like these ].

Edit: I used an equal sign instead of a colon.

 

[JohnK]

I have a suspicion this discussion is "not really about 'data types' and 'parsing methods'" and is probably more than I think it is. But, I'll bite. What's wrong with commas, or spaces, or, tabs?

 

[elephant]

I have honestly wondered why the key part needs quotes.

 

[AlfredoLlaquet]

I have honestly wondered why the key part needs quotes.

So you can do:

{"My=key":"My=Value"}

 

[AlfredoLlaquet]

Or this:

{"My:key":"My:Value"}

 

[eternal_noob]

Plain text data formats are a waste of space alltogether. Binary formats for the win!

 

[elephant]

I think AlfredoLlaquet has essentially answered something that has bothered me for years.

 

[AlfredoLlaquet]

Well, hit thanks then. I like collecting thanks and the rules of the forum encourage hitting thanks.

 

[elephant]

JSON is really a serialization of a hash map where the key must be a string - with little constraint on the string format. Don't know how I missed that.