JSON Limitations & Comments

Discussions center on JSON's key shortcomings like lack of comments, multi-line strings, and parsing issues, with advocacy for extensions like JSON5 and debates on its specifications.

➡️ Stable 0.6x Programming Languages
4,609
Comments
19
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#5662
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2008
5
2009
28
2010
44
2011
101
2012
166
2013
198
2014
244
2015
110
2016
369
2017
213
2018
265
2019
378
2020
298
2021
472
2022
329
2023
457
2024
446
2025
453
2026
33

Keywords

VSC e.g www.json JSON tools.ietf JSON5 inkdroid.org i.e JavaScript IEEE json parsing comments object douglas macro string parsers eval parser

Sample Comments

axod Mar 19, 2010 View on HN

Can you explain what is lacking in JSON? What is poorly specified or buggy?

d13 Aug 2, 2024 View on HN

This is exactly right. Comments in JSON would have killed it.

neurostimulant Jun 1, 2022 View on HN

JSON has a different set of problems, e.g. not having multi-line string support.

olejorgenb Jul 10, 2025 View on HN

JSON doesn't support comments is a big one (even though many people now are outright rebelling against this and storing "jsonc" inside .json files)

chopin Nov 29, 2022 View on HN

If JSON had comments, I'd be fine with it.

xnxn Feb 24, 2013 View on HN

Nitpick: that's an issue with JavaScript, not JSON.

ash Feb 23, 2021 View on HN

I find that JSON5 does too much.

aceBacker Oct 23, 2020 View on HN

The only problem with json is that you can't do comments with the default implementation.

wrong_variable Feb 18, 2016 View on HN

Why is parsing JSON a problem in 2016 ?

iddan Dec 9, 2024 View on HN

It's already invented and JSON w Comments is a lot simpler than JSON5 to parse