[eadmund]

> And if you accept that, having special syntax for arrays and maps is more convenient and readable than S-exprs.

S-expressions are arrays, and maps are really just degenerate unsorted arrays of key-value pairs. Taking a look at https://json.org/example.html, I think this is easily more readable:

    (menu
      (id file)
      (value File)
      (popup
        (item (value New) (onclick "CreateNewDoc()"))
        (item (value Open) (onclick "OpenDoc"))
        (item (value Close) (onclick "CloseDoc()"))))

than:

    {"menu": {
      "id": "file",
      "value": "File",
      "popup": {
        "menuitem": [
          {"value": "New", "onclick": "CreateNewDoc()"},
          {"value": "Open", "onclick": "OpenDoc()"},
          {"value": "Close", "onclick": "CloseDoc()"}
        ]
      }
    }}

[iainmerrick]

Each to their own!

A big part of the difference is that all the JSON keys are quoted, which I agree is ugly (I like JSON5 myself).

You’ve also omitted the “menuitem” from the S-expr version. That could have been omitted from the JSON too but I assume it’s meant to be there for some good reason.