Re: [apps-discuss] Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR)

[Nico Williams <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 11:23 AM, Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On May 23, 2013, at 17:35, Nico Williams <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> ECMAScript specifically only allows that.  That's where the
>> restriction comes from.
>
> JSON ≠ JavaScript.

I'm aware.  But defining protocols that can't be implemented in JS
because they use numbers that JS can't represent seems problematic.

>> Many a ECMAScript and/or JSON implementation use NaN coding, which is
>> probably why this restriction is there in the first place (though
>> that's just a guess; I'm sure there's a list archive somewhere with a
>> lengthy discussion I could check; I don't care).
>
> Now you lost me -- JSON doesn't have NaNs.
> (Another thing that CBOR has that you can't use in a JSON subset.)

NaN coding is an implementation technique where all values are
internally represented as doubles, with signal bits of NaNs used to
store pointers (for strings, arrays, objects) and representations of
null, true, and false.

>>>> - might as well have a type for "octet string" -- no base64 encoding please
>>>
>>> Yes, we are just not using the liturgical name "octet string" :-)
>>
>> Yes it's there and I missed it?
>
> Yes, we call them "byte strings" (major type 2).
> (They are actually the main reason I started work on CBOR.)

OK, thanks.