JSON: why are forward slashes escaped?

javascript json

The reason for this "escapes" me.

JSON escapes the forward slash, so a hash {a: "a/b/c"} is serialized as {"a":"a\/b\/c"} instead of {"a":"a/b/c"}.

Why?

FWIW I've never seen forward slashes escaped in JSON, I just noticed it with the Java library at code.google.com/p/json-simple

PHP's json_encode() escapes forward slashes by default, but has the JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES option starting from PHP 5.4.0 (March 2012)

Here's a PHP code that will not escape every slash, only in '</': echo str_replace('</', '<\/', json_encode($obj, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE | JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES));

Does the code include the '

JSON doesn't escape or serialize anything... your JSON serializer does. Which one are you using?

hakre

JSON doesn't require you to do that, it allows you to do that. It also allows you to use "\u0061" for "A", but it's not required, like Harold L points out:

The JSON spec says you CAN escape forward slash, but you don't have to.

Harold L answered Oct 16 '09 at 21:59

Allowing \/ helps when embedding JSON in a <script> tag, which doesn't allow </ inside strings, like Seb points out:

This is because HTML does not allow a string inside a