Re: [Json] Canonicalization

[Francis Galiegue <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 11:58 PM, Manger, James H
<[e-mail]> wrote:
> Canonicalization (c14n) may be a dirty word, and barred from the charter, but I hope it isn't too inappropriate to still discuss it on this email list.
>
> There is a better c14n format for numbers than I or draft-staykov-hu-json-canonical-form have suggested: it is the format produced by JSON.stringify, as defined in ECMAScript v5.1 [http://www.ecma-international.org/ecma-262/5.1/#sec-15.12.3]. Examples: 0, 1, -1000, 0.00002334, 1500000, 6.022e+23, 9.1e-28.
>
> In fact, c14n for JSON can (and should) be simply defined as per JSON.stringify, with two extra constraints: object name/value pairs are sorted; and \uxxxx escapes use lowercase hex digits (a-f). Done. Developers even have a readily available reference implementations simply by typing JSON.stringify(...) into the JavaScript console of their browser.
>

Not done. By saying that it should be done as per JSON.stringify(),
you basically preclude the use of JSON for languages which _do_ have
the ability to represent numbers outside of IEEE 754, and that
includes numbers as simple as 0.1.

It is not because ECMA 262 has made the braindead decision of limiting
numbers to IEEE 754 that JSON should follow way. RFC 4627 didn't make
that mistake and I certainly hope any IETF-related work concerning
JSON will not make such a mistake either.

-- 
Francis Galiegue, [e-mail]
Try out your JSON Schemas: http://json-schema-validator.herokuapp.com