A nicer CSON.stringify

[johan]

CSON.stringify

• have CSON.stringify produce safe CSON that looks nicer than native JSON
• add minimal json2cson tool that does the same, given valid JSON or CSON
• add minimal cson2json tool to reproduce JSON, given valid JSON or CSON

Still handles all the same features as JSON.stringify does, the same way, including weird inputs.

The main difference between this cson output, and what the cson package's json2cson spits out (also what prompted this pull request) are the object literals: this codec always uses curly braces, thus making:

[
  {
    hello: 'there!'
  }
]

instead of:

[
  hello: 'there!'
]

The latter is less safe, explicit, and convenient, for instance when you have some version controlled cson array which starts out with just one huge object in it. Given the cson-safe serialization, when you later add a new object to the array, there won't be a complete reindentation of the first object. And in the case of a human editing it by hand, the mistake of making the two objects actually become just one merged object is less likely to happen by accident.

[jkrems]

The problem I have with bundling a CLI tool is that this library is so far most often used as a dependency/basis for others. And adding a random CLI tool 3 times nested somewhere in the dependency tree just adds bloat. For example atom/season uses cson-safe for parsing and has a very nice CLI tool already.

As for the stringify: So far our interface is (or at least is supposed to be) compatible with the well-documented JSON.* functions. Where it isn't, it's a todo item or a bug. I'd rather not add special casing like "unless you used something that isn't a space or a tab as the third argument to stringify":

JSON.stringify({ a: 'b' }, null, 'xx')
// '{\nxx"a": "b"\n}'

[johan]

Heh, ecma-262 literally does specify the first ten any-chars in the space string should be used, ws or not.

Fixed! Also, nuked cli tools and squashed history. (People really wanting either feature can grab'em off of this archival branch.)

[jkrems]

I understand why you are defaulting to two spaces, but I'd like to opt for consistency here - CSON.stringify obj, null, 2 might be a bit more verbose but it's how JSON.stringify works and less surprising.

[johan]

While it doesn't feel like CSON without any of CSON's non-JSON properties, you're probably right. Addressing.

[johan]

Feedback addressed. It somehow didn't even occur to me that JSON.stringify's default indention would even apply to CSON, but it probably usually ends up the shortest form, which isn't a bad codec default.

[jkrems]

LGTM - thanks a lot!

[jkrems]

v0.2.0