JSON Comments

[tylercraft]

Comments in a JSON block are ignored. It would be great to be able to highlight these as well. For example:

# Example response for user object
{
  id: 1,
  name: "Joe Smith" // String that represents the users name
}

[sourrust]

JSON doesn't have comments in it's spec since it is just a representation of data. If you want comments to be highlighted, it is probably best to just use javascript instead of JSON.

[joshgoebel]

JSON doesn't have comments in it's spec since it is just a representation of data.

@sourrust Perhaps you're being a little too literal here? Our XML syntax currently covers:

['html', 'xhtml', 'rss', 'atom', 'xjb', 'xsd', 'xsl', 'plist', 'wsf'],

While I think some (most?) of those things are truly XML, HTML is for sure not, and that's a pretty HUGE discrepancy. Much larger than JSON vs JSONC in my opinion. See also C vs C++ being a single syntax... Bash vs Zsh... Awk vs Gawk...

...and I could go on... 😸

If you want comments to be highlighted, it is probably best to just use javascript instead of JSON.

Except the Javascript syntax does a much worse job of highlighting JSON because that's not what it was intended for.

---

Any chance your opinion on this one has changed or we'd be more open to this now than we were in 2014?

[egor-rogov]

I also can't see any reason for not allowing comments in JSON. It won't break highlighting of valid JSON, and will help other purposes.

[marcoscaceres]

Agree.

[mikaello]

I think this could be solved by adding support for JSON5

Summary of JSON5 features compared to JSON

The following ECMAScript 5.1 features, which are not supported in JSON, have been extended to JSON5.

Objects

• Object keys may be an ECMAScript 5.1 IdentifierName.
• Objects may have a single trailing comma.

Arrays

• Arrays may have a single trailing comma.

Strings

• Strings may be single quoted.
• Strings may span multiple lines by escaping new line characters.
• Strings may include character escapes.

Numbers

• Numbers may be hexadecimal.
• Numbers may have a leading or trailing decimal point.
• Numbers may be IEEE 754 positive infinity, negative infinity, and NaN.
• Numbers may begin with an explicit plus sign.

Comments

• Single and multi-line comments are allowed.

White Space

• Additional white space characters are allowed.

JSON5 was also mentioned in the PR that tried to add support for comments in JSON: #425 (comment)

[joshgoebel]

I think this would be a welcome addition.