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3. Syntax

3. Syntax​

A JSON Pointer is a Unicode string (see [RFC4627], Section 3) containing a sequence of zero or more reference tokens, each prefixed by a '/' (%x2F) character.

Because the characters '' (%x7E) and '/' (%x2F) have special meanings in JSON Pointer, '' needs to be encoded as '~0' and '/' needs to be encoded as '~1' when these characters appear in a reference token.

The ABNF syntax of a JSON Pointer is:

json-pointer    = *( "/" reference-token )
reference-token = *( unescaped / escaped )
unescaped       = %x00-2E / %x30-7D / %x7F-10FFFF
   ; %x2F ('/') and %x7E ('~') are excluded from 'unescaped'
escaped         = "~" ( "0" / "1" )
  ; representing '~' and '/', respectively

It is an error condition if a JSON Pointer value does not conform to this syntax (see Section 7).

Note that JSON Pointers are specified in characters, not as bytes.

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