diff --git a/src/Task.cpp b/src/Task.cpp
index c0adcc36b..31c3125bb 100644
--- a/src/Task.cpp
+++ b/src/Task.cpp
@@ -659,17 +659,18 @@ void Task::parse (const std::string& input)
             data[name] = decode (json::decode (value));
 
             // Fix for issue#2689: taskserver sometimes encodes the depends
-            // property as a JSON-encoded one-element array of strings.  So, if
-            // depends has form `[".."]`, then apply another layer of JSON
-            // decoding.
-            if (name == "depends" && data[name].length () >= 4) {
-              auto l = data[name].length ();
-              if (data[name][0] == '[' &&
-                  data[name][1] == '"' &&
-                  data[name][l-2] == '"' &&
-                  data[name][l-1] == ']') {
-                data[name] = data[name].substr(2, l-4);
+            // property as a JSON-encoded array of strings.  To avoid this whole
+            // issue, we strip anything that isn't a UUID character or a comma.
+            if (name == "depends") {
+              std::string newDep;
+              for (auto &c: data[name]) {
+                if ((c >= '0' && c <= '9') ||
+                    (c >= 'a' && c <= 'f') ||
+                    c == ',' || c == '-') {
+                  newDep.push_back(c);
+                }
               }
+              data[name] = newDep;
             }
           }
 
diff --git a/test/t.t.cpp b/test/t.t.cpp
index 484e5f3d7..d053f0643 100644
--- a/test/t.t.cpp
+++ b/test/t.t.cpp
@@ -137,7 +137,7 @@ int main (int, char**)
   sample = "["
            "uuid:\"00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000\" "
            "description:\"d\" "
-           "depends:\"[\\\"cfee3170-f153-4075-aa1d-e20bcac2841b,f5982cca-2ea1-4bfd-832c-9bd571dc0743\\\"]\""
+           "depends:\"[\\\"cfee3170-f153-4075-aa1d-e20bcac2841b\\\",\\\"f5982cca-2ea1-4bfd-832c-9bd571dc0743\\\"]\""
            "]";
   ff4 = Task (sample);
   value = ff4.get ("uuid");
@@ -151,7 +151,7 @@ int main (int, char**)
   sample = "["
            "uuid:\"00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000\" "
            "description:\"d\" "
-           "depends:\"&open;\\\"cfee3170-f153-4075-aa1d-e20bcac2841b,f5982cca-2ea1-4bfd-832c-9bd571dc0743\\\"&close;\""
+           "depends:\"&open;\\\"cfee3170-f153-4075-aa1d-e20bcac2841b\\\",\\\"f5982cca-2ea1-4bfd-832c-9bd571dc0743\\\"&close;\""
            "]";
   ff4 = Task (sample);
   value = ff4.get ("uuid");