Json – Is JSON a markup language like XML?

eval() is not necessary. This will work fine:

var date = new Date(parseInt(jsonDate.substr(6)));

The substr() function takes out the /Date( part, and the parseInt() function gets the integer and ignores the )/ at the end. The resulting number is passed into the Date constructor.

I have intentionally left out the radix (the 2nd argument to parseInt); see my comment below.

Also, I completely agree with Rory's comment: ISO-8601 dates are preferred over this old format - so this format generally shouldn't be used for new development.

For ISO-8601 formatted JSON dates, just pass the string into the Date constructor:

var date = new Date(jsonDate); //no ugly parsing needed; full timezone support

No.

The JSON is data only, and if you include a comment, then it will be data too.

You could have a designated data element called "_comment" (or something) that should be ignored by apps that use the JSON data.

You would probably be better having the comment in the processes that generates/receives the JSON, as they are supposed to know what the JSON data will be in advance, or at least the structure of it.

But if you decided to:

{
   "_comment": "comment text goes here...",
   "glossary": {
      "title": "example glossary",
      "GlossDiv": {
         "title": "S",
         "GlossList": {
            "GlossEntry": {
               "ID": "SGML",
               "SortAs": "SGML",
               "GlossTerm": "Standard Generalized Markup Language",
               "Acronym": "SGML",
               "Abbrev": "ISO 8879:1986",
               "GlossDef": {
                  "para": "A meta-markup language, used to create markup languages such as DocBook.",
                  "GlossSeeAlso": ["GML", "XML"]
               },
               "GlossSee": "markup"
            }
         }
      }
   }
}