About the Library

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About the Library#

JSON5#

Note

https://json5.org

JSON5 is a file format best suited for human readable and maintainable configs. It is a superset of JSON and it builds on its strong sides:

  • Backwards compatible with JSON (like YAML[1])

  • A subset of JavaScript ES5.1

  • Relatively easy to parse

adding its own of course:

  • Comments

  • Unquoted keys that declutter config a lot visually

  • Trailing commas

  • Multiline strings

Note

This library and this documentation refer to JSON5 arrays as “lists” to separate them from PHP arrays and to align it to PHP terminology (@see array_is_list)

Project Goal#

First, what are not the goals:

  • This is not a parser, there are good implementations already. I recommend colinodell/json5.

  • This project for now does not allow modifications of existing configs. JSON5 files, like YAML and TOML, must be written by a human, so any automated tool must also preserve all custom formatting when possible. I want to solve a smaller problem for now.

The main goal of this project is to create a tool that allows developers to generate a pretty initial config for their users. A side goal is so this tool can also be used to prettify existing JSON configs.

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