This should be valid JSON:

[atoponce@fosstodon.org]

This should be valid JSON:

{
"n": [0, 1/6, 2]
}

But alas:

"Invalid JSON!
Error: Parse error on line 2:
{ "n": [0, 1/6, 2]}
-------------^
Expecting 'EOF', '}', ',', ']', got 'undefined'"

Ugh.

#javascript #programming

[ryanc@infosec.exchange]

@atoponce ...why would that be valid? You're inlining code, the whole point of JSON is that it doesn't need to evaluate code.

[atoponce@fosstodon.org]

@ryanc Yeah, I guess. 1/6 is a number though just as much as 0.16666666666666666. I guess I could do:

{
"n": [0, {"/": [1, 6]}, 2]
}

And handle the operation in my code, but that's annoying.

[ryanc@infosec.exchange]

@atoponce In what programming languages is 1/6 a number and not code? Exact fractions (BigRational?) are a nice thing to have for some use cases, but I don't think many languages have them out of the box.

[ryanc@infosec.exchange]

@atoponce What really irritates me about JSON is it doesn't support undefined, Infinity, -Infinity, or NaN.