Question

When I JSON.stringify() the following code:

var exampleObject = { "name" : "Žiga Kovač", "kraj" : "Žužemberk"};

I get different results between browsers.

IE8 and Google Chrome return:

{"name":"\u017diga Kova\u010d","kraj":"\u017du\u017eemberk"}

While Firefox and Opera return:

{"name":"Žiga Kovač","kraj":"Žužemberk"}

I am using the browser’s native JSON implementation in all 4 browsers. If I undefine the native JSON implementation and replace it with the one from json.org, then all browsers return:

{"name":"Žiga Kovač","kraj":"Žužemberk"}

Why is this happening, which result is correct and is it possible to make that all browsers return:

{"name":"\u017diga Kova\u010d","kraj":"\u017du\u017eemberk"}

?

Answer 1

These two representations are absolutely equivalent.

The one uses Unicode escape sequences (\uxxxx) to represent a Unicode character, the other uses an actual Unicode character. json.org defines a string as:

string
    - ""
    - "chars"
chars
    - char
    - char chars
char
    - any Unicode character except " or \ or control characters
    - one of: \" \\ \/ \b \f \n \r \t
    - \u four-hex-digits

There is no difference in the strings themselves, only in their representation. This is the same thing HTML does when you use ©, © or © to represent the copyright sign.