returned value from fs.readFileSync(...) can not be passed into JSON.parse

[liucougar]

run the following code:

var sys=require("sys"), fs=require("fs");
var content=fs.readFileSync("a.json");
sys.puts(JSON.parse(content));

file a.json (referenced above) can be any file containing any valid json (like: {"a":1} will do)

this is the output (nodejs 0.1.98):

/tp/selenium-hub/json.js:3
sys.puts(JSON.parse(content));
              ^

no detailed error message at all. It turns out the returned value from fs.readFileSync is not a string (typeof content is object), and JSON.parse expects a String as input

Workaround is to wrap the result of fs.readFileSync in a String, like this:

var sys=require("sys"), fs=require("fs");
var content=String(fs.readFileSync("a.json"));
sys.puts(JSON.parse(content));

this is a regression: the first code snippet worked fine with nodejs at:
commit 320d3e9
Fri May 14 11:15:31 2010 -0700

[liucougar]

this is as design: readFileSync returns a buffer if no encoding is specified, this should be done like this:

var sys=require("sys"), fs=require("fs");
var content=fs.readFileSync("a.json", "utf8");
sys.puts(JSON.parse(content));