[Json] Re: Old Errata

[Tim Bray <[e-mail]>]

On May 28, 2026 at 11:00:22 AM, Andy Newton <[e-mail]> wrote:

7673 - reject
>
>
> I need some clue with this one.
>

8259 says “the characters that MUST be escaped: quotation mark, reverse
solidus, and the control characters (U+0000 through U+001F).”

Unicode’s definition of “control characters” is, as the erratum states,
quite different and includes a lot more code points, notably the C1
controls and DEL.

But it is obvious that we can’t change the JSON grammar even when the RFC
text uses Unicode lingo inconsistently, for the same reason that we can’t
change anything about JSON, namely the billions-strong installed base.

So I choose to interpret the phrase “control characters” in 8259 as
specifying what they mean in the JSON context, i.e. U+0000 through U+001F,
rather than a reference to the Unicode definition.  -Tim



> -andy, ART AD
>