JSON Comments

In JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), comments are not officially supported as part of the JSON syntax. Unlike some other programming languages and data formats, such as JavaScript or XML, JSON does not have a standard way to include comments within the data.

The JSON specification, as defined in RFC 8259, does not mention or allow comments. JSON is designed to be a lightweight and efficient data interchange format, and comments are considered extraneous and unnecessary for this purpose. As a result, JSON parsers are not required to handle or interpret comments, and including comments in JSON data may lead to parsing errors or unexpected behavior in some JSON parsers.

For example, consider the following JSON data with a comment:

{
  "name": "John",
  "age": 30,
  // This is a comment
  "city": "New York"
}

While the above JSON data might be human-readable and self-explanatory to developers, it is technically not valid JSON according to the official specification.

If you need to include comments in your JSON data for documentation purposes or for human understanding, you may consider handling comments outside the JSON data during development or by using a pre-processing step to remove the comments before parsing the JSON.

Alternatively, if you require data interchange with comments and more flexible formatting, you may consider using a data format like JavaScript or YAML, which do support comments. However, keep in mind that using non-standard formats may affect compatibility with some JSON parsers or libraries.