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getify/JSON.minify

★ 417 · updated Feb 2024

Simple minifier for JSON to remove comments and whitespace

A small utility that strips C/C++ comments and whitespace from JSON-with-comments, producing valid JSON that standard parsers can handle. Aimed at developers who want to write commented config files and parse them without switching to a full JSONC parser. The original implementation is JavaScript; ports to PHP, Python, and Objective-C live on separate branches.

Solves a real, narrow problem cleanly — if you have JSON config files with comments, this is a one-liner fix. The multi-language port strategy means you can use the same approach across a polyglot stack. Has Douglas Crockford's explicit blessing for the use case, which matters given he defined JSON. Forks-to-stars ratio suggests people actually fork and adapt it rather than just star it.

The repo is essentially empty on main — no source file, just two markdown files; the actual code is scattered across branches, which is a genuinely awkward structure for any tooling or package manager. Last meaningful activity was 2024, and the JavaScript ecosystem has largely moved on to JSONC (VS Code, TypeScript, Prettier all handle it natively). At 417 stars in 10+ years, adoption never really took off. If you need this for a modern project, you'd be better served by a maintained JSONC parser like `jsonc-parser` from the VS Code team.

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