encoding/json: Encoder adds trailing newlines

[gopherbot]

by opennota:

json.Encoder adds trailing newlines after values:
http://play.golang.org/p/skOwJv7qZR

This behaviour should be documented or removed.

I personally do not see why it should work so. From
https://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/src/pkg/encoding/json/stream.go#165

        // Terminate each value with a newline.
        // This makes the output look a little nicer
        // when debugging, and some kind of space
        // is required if the encoded value was a number,
        // so that the reader knows there aren't more
        // digits coming.
        e.WriteByte('\n')

But the reader will know that without the newline, because numbers will be followed by
',', ']', '}', or EOF, right?

[balasanjay]

Comment 1:

I think the comment is referring to something like this:
http://play.golang.org/p/TttaTtSu_u

[dsymonds]

Comment 2:

I don't think this is an issue, but I'll let Russ decide.

Owner changed to @rsc.

Status changed to Accepted.

[gopherbot]

Comment 3 by opennota:

It is an issue, if you're writing unit tests and then forced to investigate for half an
hour, why there's a spurious newline.

[cznic]

Comment 4:

@3: JSON tokens are separated by {white-space}+. So there's infinitely many valid, but
different encodings carrying the same semantics for any given set of JSON encoded
values. IOW, there's no such thing as a "spurious newline" between JSON tokens. It's the
test which is broken if it depends on particular white space configuration, because that
can change at any time without breaking the API.
IMHO: #WAI

[minux]

Comment 5:

I agree with #4. The \n is partly for human readability and partly for separation of
streaming json
numbers.

[gopherbot]

Comment 6 by opennota:

I resign my proposal of elimination of these newlines, but still think it needs to be
documented.

[gopherbot]

Comment 7:

CL https://golang.org/cl/87420043 mentions this issue.

[minux]

Comment 8:

This issue was closed by revision 6f25f1d.

Status changed to Fixed.