Shouldn't JSON have comments too?

No, you should rather explain what the data does when it gets serialized into JSON or where it gets processed.

@T1l3 and what if that place doesn't exist yet? Or if its a config file for a library you have no control over or access to.There are many cases i've wished I had comments.

I once used a regex to find comments in JSON and put a wrapper around a file parsing function so that it stripped them out before parsing. It saved so much time and hassle across the team.

With json being used not just for communication between computers, but also for configs, I think it should support comments.

It doesn't, so I prefer configs in yml or similar.

@practiseSafeHex It would be difficult to create a safe regex. Example: Forward slashes in strings are often escaped, but it's not required, so a value could contain something looking like a comment.

A good option is to use js instead of json where possible, and export the config object.

JSON does in a way. Obviously JSON is JavaScript Object Notation, and while it is also a popular data structure as of late, it's still a JavaScript thing, and JavaScript does have comments :)

Doesn't really count, but it's worth something!

Another option is put comments a field that won't be deserialized. But either way it's not a good idea.

{
"__comment__": "some booleans",
"property1": true,
"property2": false,
"__comment__": "the end"
}

Is valid JSON

Go with YAML

@bittersweet Thanks for your comment. I had no clue what the OP (sorry @princebansal) was referring to until you mentioned 'I think it should support comments' :)

@Tobias But then there's a lot of code which enumerates json keys and crashes on your example 😉

A preparser operation like JSmin is a better solution...

Or, don't use JSON. It's a great format for data exchange between processes, but shit for writing configs.