[Cbor] Re: I-D Action: draft-mcnally-deterministic-cbor-10.html

[Wolf McNally <[e-mail]>]

Here’s an interesting observation.

Go to the CBOR playground and paste in the following text to the left side, then encode and decode it.

[
    1.0,
    2.0,
    3.0,
    4.0
]

Here’s what you get back:

[1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0]

What? It’s not the same! The white space has not been preserved.

Well, that’s no big deal when you understand that with CBOR, white space in diagnostic notation is semantically null, so CBOR doesn’t encode it.

In fact, if you round-trip it again, you get back the same result. Over and over.

Everything is working completely as intended and expected.

Now turn on the dCBOR checkbox and round-trip it again. You get back:

[1, 2, 3, 4]

What? It’s not the same! The decimal points have not been preserved.

Well, that’s no big deal when you understand that with dCBOR, a zero fractional part of a floating point value in diagnostic notation is semantically null, so dCBOR doesn’t encode it.

In fact, if you round-trip it again, you get back the same result. Over and over.

Everything is working completely as intended and expected.

~ Wolf