JSON vs JSON5 vs JSONC: Adding Comments to Configuration Files
Explore JSON extensions like JSONC and JSON5 that allow comments and trailing commas, and where they are used in developer tooling.
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Why does standard JSON not support comments? Douglas Crockford famously stated: "I removed comments from JSON because I saw people using them to hold parsing directives, a practice which would have destroyed interoperability."
JSONC (JSON with Comments)
Used heavily in VS Code (`settings.json`, `tsconfig.json`). Supports single-line `//` comments and multi-line `/* */` comments, but remains otherwise identical to standard JSON.
JSON5
An official superset designed for humans. Supports comments, trailing commas, single-quoted strings, unquoted identifier keys, and hex numbers (`0xdecaf`). Ideal for project configuration files.
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