JSON integer mangling

[nnposter]

Function json.generate is using string.format("%g", obj) to convert numbers to strings. This has an undesired effect of mangling longer integers as follows:

obj = {session=1684119503}
json.make_object(obj)
str = json.generate(obj)

String str is now {"session": 1.68412e+009}.

I wonder if it would be more appropriate to use tostring(obj), which does not have this side-effect.

Digging into the history, the "%g" conversion has been there since the initial json.lua commit by David in 2010 (r16896).

[Varunram]

%g would round off to five places since its compact float, so clearly we'd have a problem with large numbers. But wouldn't changing the flag to %f solve the issue (unless its greater than 100,000,000,000,000 going by the docs)? @nnposter

[nnposter]

Using %f would not work either:

$ lua
Lua 5.3.3  Copyright (C) 1994-2016 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
> x=123
> print(("%f"):format(x))
123.000000
>

[Varunram]

Ah, forgot about the extra decimals that come with %f. The fix must work, don't see any side effects (at least none are mentioned in the docs) associated with them :)

[dmiller-nmap]

Using tostring would be better in most cases, though it does introduce a ".0" at the end if the number is not a Lua Integer. Still, this removes control of the formatting a bit from the JSON library and puts it back in control of the calling script, which would be responsible for calling math.tointeger if necessary.

[nnposter]

Here is an overview of the effect:

             ("%g):format()     tostring()
------------------------------------------
0:           0                  0
-3:          -3                 -3
123456789:   1.23457e+008       123456789 <---
0.06:        0.06               0.06
1.0:         1                  1.0       <---
1.23e30:     1.23e+030          1.23e+030
1.23e-030:   1.23e-030          1.23e-030
9e999        inf                inf
9e-999       0                  0.0       <---

IMHO tostring() is doing a better job in all these three cases.

@dmiller-nmap I understand and agree with what you are saying but I am not sure whether you are agreeing with the proposed change or you have concerns over it.