On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 6:12 AM, David Carlisle <> wrote:
> Clearly I'm missing something, because I can't see how lone < and & messing
> up an XML document is really any different from mismatched { or [ messing up
> json? I can see a qualitative difference between xml and html parsing,
> where html (especially html5 flavoured html) is designed to silently recover
> from more or less any arbitrary rubbish thrown at it, but json, like
> javascript (and xml) has stricter parsing rules doesn't it? and so
> consequently requires some more care in construction.
The difference is that XML contains text and JSON doesn't. (And I mean
text as writers mean it, not as programmers mean it.) Since no one
tries to write novels/blog posts/form letters/ poetry / etc. in JSON
they don't care about this there but do in XML.
Furthermore { and [ are less likely to appear in ordinary folks' text
than &, <, and >. Only programmers and occasionally mathematicians
regularly use { and [. Many, many folks use & and not a few use < and
>.
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold
