Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jerf 4698 days ago
He both invented and discovered it. Yes, the object literal syntax existed, but he also carefully (and IMHO correctly) specified a strict subset as well, for these interoperability reasons. For instance, Javascript is happy with {a: 1}, but that is not legal JSON. It's a very well done standard.
1 comments
ryanpetrich 4698 days ago
JSON is not actually a strict subset. Certain characters when left unescaped in a JSON string make for invalid JavaScript: http://timelessrepo.com/json-isnt-a-javascript-subset
link
jerf 4698 days ago
Indeed, and I apologize for my ambiguity, as you are correct. By "strict subset" what I meant was a subset that attempts to reduce options, so that legality and illegality is easier to discern. That is, where Javascript accepts apostrophe and double-quote to delimit strings, JSON only accepts double-quotes, thus, "stricter" than real Javascript.

You are of course correct that JSON turns out not to quite be a strict subset in the set theory sense of "strict subset", though obviously that's a bug in the spec rather than a deliberate design decision.

link