Re: [Json] Limitations on number size?

[Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]>]

>  JSON numbers are ECMAScript numbers

That's a common misconception.

JSON numbers are what they are (see the production "number" in RFC 4627).
JSON numbers obviously are decimal, ECMAScript numbers are binary.

The text then goes on to say "The representation of numbers is similar to that used in most programming languages."; most programming languages distinguish 0 and 0.0 very heavily, and almost all modern ones have more than 53 bits of precision in numbers, but most programming languages also use binary numbers for the semantics of that decimal representation.

When generating JSON for high levels of interoperability, you wouldn't want to rely on the recipient distinguishing 0 from 0.0, or more generally on distinguishing two numbers that differ but map to the same IEEE 754 double precision number.  Some user communities have done the latter*) and I know a lot of parsers that do the former.

> ECMAScript numbers are IEEE floating point doubles (minus some odd bits).  

Indeed.

> I was astonished to find out that some people disagree, apparently to the point that they believe that 0 is different from .0

.0 is not a JSON number, but 0.0 is.
Whether that is different from 0 is up to the data model (RFC 4627 is mute about that, and I have reason to believe that is intentional); in interoperable JSON, it would be foolish to rely on them being different (but it is less clear to me how foolish it would be to rely on them not being different), in JSON syntax, they clearly are different.

Grüße, Carsten

*) https://dev.twitter.com/docs/twitter-ids-json-and-snowflake