alt Hacker News> The only thing that JSON is really missing are comments and trailing commas. I use JSONC for that.
YAML[0] supports JSON formatted resources and octothorpe ('#') comments as well. I didn't see anything in the spec specifically allowing for trailing commas however.
Here is an exemplar using the Ruby YAML module:
#!/usr/bin/ruby
require 'yaml'
puts YAML.load(
%/
# YAML is a strict superset of JSON, which
# means supporting octothorpe end-of-line
# comments is supported in JSON formatted
# YAML if and only if the content is multi-line
# formatted as well (like this example).
{
# This is valid YAML!
"foo" : "bar"
}
/
)
Replies
ratorx • 12/09/2024
Whilst YAML is an option, if the choice is between having the unnecessary extra features of JSON5 or YAML, JSON5 seems like the clear winner.
Allowing multiple types of quotes may be an unnecessary feature but it is a clear lesser evil compared to the mountain of footguns that YAML brings with it.
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The problem of yaml is that it allows too much. It allows unquoted strings, and those can be interpreted by the parser as numbers, timestamps, booleans, etc. This is a source of many fooguns.
Use of indentation to denote nesting can sometimes be an anti-feature, too, because while using that the format does not provide a way to make certain that the entire stream has been read (parens balanced). This may lead to problems or even exploits.
Pure JSON is so painful for human consumption though, I willingly choose yaml if it's the only alternative.
JSON5 may indeed be a sweet spot between human-friendliness and lack of nasty surprises.