Can a single, stand-alone literal form a valid JSON "document"?
json, lint, specifications, validation
Solution
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Actually there are two different JSON specifications. RFC 4627 requires a JSON text to be an object or an array. ECMA-262, 5th edition, section 15.12 does not impose this restriction.
JSON root element
Problem
For example, is this supposed to be a valid JSON document? ``` "foo" ``` The grammar specs at json.org isn't entirely clear. I don't think it is said anywhere in the specs that everything must be in a `{}` object or `[]` array in a valid JSON document. JSONLint marks the stand-alone string `"foo"` as an error and expects everything to be inside a `{}` object or a `[]` array. However, the JSON object of major browsers (IE 8, IE 10, Chrome 28, Firefox 23, Opera 12) accept stand-alone literals just fine: ``` >>> JSON.parse('"foo"'); "foo" >>> JSON.parse('true'); true >>> JSON.parse('1234'); 1234 ``` Same thing with Python 2.7+: ``` >>> import json >>> json.loads('"foo"') u'foo' >>> json.loads('true') True >>> json.loads('1234') 1234 ``` So who is right and who is wrong?