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Author Alex Gordon
Recipients Alex Gordon
Date 2017-02-13.02:04:32
SpamBayes Score -1.0
Marked as misclassified Yes
Message-id <1486951474.88.0.917635653579.issue29540@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
In-reply-to
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Broadly speaking, there are three main output styles for json.dump/dumps:

1. Default: json.dumps(obj)
2. Compact: json.dumps(obj, separators=(',', ':'))
3. Pretty-printing: json.dumps(obj, sort_keys=True, indent=4)

The 'compact' style is the densest, suitable if the JSON is to be sent over the network, archived on disk, or otherwise consumed by a machine. The pretty-printed style is for human consumption: configuration files, debugging, etc.

Even though the compact style is often desirable, the API for producing it is unforgiving. It's easy to accidentally write code like the following, which silently produces invalid nonsense:

    json.dumps(obj, separators=(':', ','))

I propose the addition of a new flag `compact=True`, that simply sets `separators=(',', ':')`. e.g.

    >>> obj = {"foo": 1, "bar": 2}
    >>> json.dumps(obj, compact=True)
    '{"foo":1,"bar":2}'

The defaults for `separators=` are good, so eventually `compact=` would relegate `separators=` to obscurity. Setting both `compact=True` and `separators=` at the same time should be an error.
History
Date User Action Args
2017-02-13 02:04:35Alex Gordonsetrecipients: + Alex Gordon
2017-02-13 02:04:34Alex Gordonsetmessageid: <1486951474.88.0.917635653579.issue29540@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
2017-02-13 02:04:34Alex Gordonlinkissue29540 messages
2017-02-13 02:04:32Alex Gordoncreate