What is the most versatile array to string serialization method?

Question

I'm particularly interested in the following features:

• possibility of modifying the serialized array using regular expressions or other simple methods,
• being able to parse the string using standard tools in various programming languages,
• serialization of simple arrays as well as associative arrays (objects),
• conciseness and human readability,

I've been looking into JSON, url-encoding, Rison, what do you think?

Answer 1

JSON is quite versatile, allowing for basic objects, arrays and primitives (no classes though) as well as nested objects/arrays, and it's very well supported in many programming languages.

Answer 2

If you're asking what the most versatile method is, I would suggest XML despite its clunky nature. It is verbose, but allows for more flexibility than JSON which is primarily valuable in its light syntax and ease of parsing.

I still prefer JSON in most situations.