[colonwqbang]

How do you feel numbers are ill defined in json? The syntactical definition is clear and seems to yield a unique and obvious interpretation of json numbers as mathematical rational numbers.

A given programming language may not have a built in representation for rational numbers in general. That isn't the fault of json.

[thaumasiotes]

I can't really tell what you're trying to say; JSON also has no representation for rational numbers in general. The only numeric format it allows is the standard floating point "2.01e+25" format. Try representing 1/3 that way.

The usual complaint about numbers not being well-defined in JSON is that you have to provide all numbers as strings; 13682916732413492 is ill-advised JSON, but "13682916732413492" is fine. That isn't technically a problem in JSON; it's a problem in Javascript, but JSON parsers that handle literals the same way Javascript would turn out to be common.

Your "defense", on the other hand, actually is a lack in JSON itself. There is no way to represent rational numbers numerically.

[colonwqbang]

I didn't say that json can represent all rational numbers. I said that all json numbers have an obvious interpretation as a rational number.

So far you haven't really shown an example of a json number which has an ambiguous or ill defined interpretation.

Maybe you mean that json numbers may not fit into 32 bit integers or double floats. That's certainly true but I don't see it as a deficiency in the standard. There is no limit on the size of strings in json, so why have a limit on numbers?

[thaumasiotes]

>> A given programming language may not have a built in representation for rational numbers in general.

Why did you say this?