JSLint is not a JSON decoder. Try Firefox or Chrome or PHP or Python instead. The representation of strings is similar to conventions used in the C family of programming languages. A string begins and ends with quotation marks. All Unicode characters may be placed within the quotation marks except for the characters that must be escaped: quotation mark, reverse solidus, and the control characters (U+0000 through U+001F). From: Roberto Spadim <roberto@spadim.com.br> Date: Saturday, January 31, 2015 at 3:56 PM To: Tom Worster <fsb@thefsb.org> Cc: Peter Laursen <peter_laursen@webyog.com>, maria-discuss email list <maria-discuss@lists.launchpad.net> Subject: Re: [Maria-discuss] JSON and binary strings from jslint: http://www.jslint.com/ return: JSON: good.