The JSON Data Interchange Format (ECMA standard, October 2013)

["Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>]

Hi Folks,

ECMA has just published: The JSON Data Interchange Format [1].

The specification is 5 pages long. In those 5 pages there are lots of large drawings. 

Here are some interesting snippets:

	JSON is a lightweight, text-based, 
	language-independent data interchange 
	format. It was derived from the ECMAScript 
	programming language, but is programming 
	language independent.

	JSON is a text format that facilitates structured 
	data interchange between all programming 
	languages. 

	Because it is so simple, it is not expected 
	that the JSON grammar will ever change. 
	This gives JSON, as a foundational notation, 
	tremendous stability. 

	It is expected that other standards will refer 
	to this one... Such standards may require 
	specific behaviours. JSON itself specifies no 
	behaviour.

	JSON was inspired by the object literals of 
	JavaScript.
	
	JSON is agnostic about numbers. In any 
	programming language, there can be a variety 
	of number types of various capacities and 
	complements, fixed or floating, binary or 
	decimal. That can make interchange between
	different programming languages difficult.
	JSON instead offers only the representation 
	of numbers that humans use: a sequence of 
	digits. All programming languages know how 
	to make sense of digit sequences even if they 
	disagree on internal representations. That is 
	enough to allow interchange.

/Roger

[1] http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/ECMA-404.pdf