ECMA-262, 10^th edition, June 2019

)

states that the nonterminal WhileStatement represents the token while, followed by a left parenthesis token, followed by an Expression, followed by a right parenthesis token, followed by a Statement. The occurrences of Expression and Statement are themselves nonterminals. As another example, the syntactic definition:

states that an ArgumentList may represent either a single AssignmentExpression or an ArgumentList, followed by a comma, followed by an AssignmentExpression. This definition of ArgumentList is recursive, that is, it is defined in terms of itself. The result is that an ArgumentList may contain any positive number of arguments, separated by commas, where each argument expression is an AssignmentExpression. Such recursive definitions of nonterminals are common.

The subscripted suffix “_opt”, which may appear after a terminal or nonterminal, indicates an optional symbol. The alternative containing the optional symbol actually specifies two right-hand sides, one that omits the optional element and one that includes it. This means that:

opt

is a convenient abbreviation for:

and that:

for

(

opt

;

opt

)

is a convenient abbreviation for:

IterationStatement

for

(

;

opt

)

for

(

;

opt

)

which in turn is an abbreviation for:

IterationStatement

for

(

;

)

for

(

;

)

for

(

;

)

for

(

;

)

so, in this example, the nonterminal IterationStatement actually has four alternative right-hand sides.

A production may be parameterized by a subscripted annotation of the form “_[parameters]”, which may appear as a suffix to the nonterminal symbol defined by the production. “_parameters” may be either a single name or a comma separated list of names. A parameterized production is shorthand for a set of productions defining all combinations of the parameter names, preceded by an underscore, appended to the parameterized nonterminal symbol. This means that:

[Return]

is a convenient abbreviation for:

and that:

[Return, In]

is an abbreviation for:

StatementList_Return_In

Multiple parameters produce a combinatory number of productions, not all of which are necessarily referenced in a complete grammar.

References to nonterminals on the right-hand side of a production can also be parameterized. For example:

[+In]

is equivalent to saying:

ExpressionStatement_In

and:

[~In]

is equivalent to:

A nonterminal reference may have both a parameter list and an “_opt” suffix. For example:

[+In]

opt

is an abbreviation for:

Initializer_In

Prefixing a parameter name with “_?” on a right-hand side nonterminal reference makes that parameter value dependent upon the occurrence of the parameter name on the reference to the current production's left-hand side symbol. For example:

[In]

[?In]

is an abbreviation for:

VariableDeclaration_In

Initializer_In

If a right-hand side alternative is prefixed with “[+parameter]” that alternative is only available if the named parameter was used in referencing the production's nonterminal symbol. If a right-hand side alternative is prefixed with “[~parameter]” that alternative is only available if the named parameter was not used in referencing the production's nonterminal symbol. This means that:

[Return]

[+Return]

is an abbreviation for:

and that:

[Return]

[~Return]

is an abbreviation for:

When the words “one of” follow the colon(s) in a grammar definition, they signify that each of the terminal symbols on the following line or lines is an alternative definition. For example, the lexical grammar for ECMAScript contains the production:

NonZeroDigit

one of

which is merely a convenient abbreviation for:

NonZeroDigit

If the phrase “[empty]” appears as the right-hand side of a production, it indicates that the production's right-hand side contains no terminals or nonterminals.

If the phrase “[lookahead ∉ set]” appears in the right-hand side of a production, it indicates that the production may not be used if the immediately following input token sequence is a member of the given set. The set can be written as a comma separated list of one or two element terminal sequences enclosed in curly brackets. For convenience, the set can also be written as a nonterminal, in which case it represents the set of all terminals to which that nonterminal could expand. If the set consists of a single terminal the phrase “[lookahead ≠ terminal]” may be used.

For example, given the definitions:

one of

the definition:

[lookahead ∉ { 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 }]

DecimalDigits

DecimalDigit

[lookahead ∉ DecimalDigit]

matches either the letter n followed by one or more decimal digits the first of which is even, or a decimal digit not followed by another decimal digit.

Similarly, if the phrase “[lookahead ∈ set]” appears in the right-hand side of a production, it indicates that the production may only be used if the immediately following input token sequence is a member of the given set. If the set consists of a single terminal the phrase “[lookahead = terminal]” may be used.

If the phrase “[no LineTerminator here]” appears in the right-hand side of a production of the syntactic grammar, it indicates that the production is a restricted production: it may not be used if a LineTerminator occurs in the input stream at the indicated position. For example, the production:

ThrowStatement

throw

[no LineTerminator here]

;

indicates that the production may not be used if a LineTerminator occurs in the script between the throw token and the Expression.

Unless the presence of a LineTerminator is forbidden by a restricted production, any number of occurrences of LineTerminator may appear between any two consecutive tokens in the stream of input elements without affecting the syntactic acceptability of the script.

When an alternative in a production of the lexical grammar or the numeric string grammar appears to be a multi-code point token, it represents the sequence of code points that would make up such a token.

The right-hand side of a production may specify that certain expansions are not permitted by using the phrase “but not” and then indicating the expansions to be excluded. For example, the production:

Identifier

IdentifierName

but not ReservedWord

means that the nonterminal Identifier may be replaced by any sequence of code points that could replace IdentifierName provided that the same sequence of code points could not replace ReservedWord.

Finally, a few nonterminal symbols are described by a descriptive phrase in sans-serif type in cases where it would be impractical to list all the alternatives:

SourceCharacter

any Unicode code point

5.2Algorithm Conventions

The specification often uses a numbered list to specify steps in an algorithm. These algorithms are used to precisely specify the required semantics of ECMAScript language constructs. The algorithms are not intended to imply the use of any specific implementation technique. In practice, there may be more efficient algorithms available to implement a given feature.

Algorithms may be explicitly parameterized, in which case the names and usage of the parameters must be provided as part of the algorithm's definition.

Algorithm steps may be subdivided into sequential substeps. Substeps are indented and may themselves be further divided into indented substeps. Outline numbering conventions are used to identify substeps with the first level of substeps labelled with lower case alphabetic characters and the second level of substeps labelled with lower case roman numerals. If more than three levels are required these rules repeat with the fourth level using numeric labels. For example:

Top-level step
1. Substep.
2. Substep.
  1. Subsubstep.
    1. Subsubsubstep
      1. Subsubsubsubstep
        Subsubsubsubsubstep

A step or substep may be written as an “if” predicate that conditions its substeps. In this case, the substeps are only applied if the predicate is true. If a step or substep begins with the word “else”, it is a predicate that is the negation of the preceding “if” predicate step at the same level.

A step may specify the iterative application of its substeps.

A step that begins with “Assert:” asserts an invariant condition of its algorithm. Such assertions are used to make explicit algorithmic invariants that would otherwise be implicit. Such assertions add no additional semantic requirements and hence need not be checked by an implementation. They are used simply to clarify algorithms.

Algorithm steps may declare named aliases for any value using the form “Let x be someValue”. These aliases are reference-like in that both x and someValue refer to the same underlying data and modifications to either are visible to both. Algorithm steps that want to avoid this reference-like behaviour should explicitly make a copy of the right-hand side: “Let x be a copy of someValue” creates a shallow copy of someValue.

Once declared, an alias may be referenced in any subsequent steps and must not be referenced from steps prior to the alias's declaration. Aliases may be modified using the form “Set x to someOtherValue”.

5.2.1Abstract Operations

In order to facilitate their use in multiple parts of this specification, some algorithms, called abstract operations, are named and written in parameterized functional form so that they may be referenced by name from within other algorithms. Abstract operations are typically referenced using a functional application style such as OperationName(arg1, arg2). Some abstract operations are treated as polymorphically dispatched methods of class-like specification abstractions. Such method-like abstract operations are typically referenced using a method application style such as someValue.OperationName(arg1, arg2).

5.2.2Syntax-Directed Operations

A syntax-directed operation is a named operation whose definition consists of algorithms, each of which is associated with one or more productions from one of the ECMAScript grammars. A production that has multiple alternative definitions will typically have a distinct algorithm for each alternative. When an algorithm is associated with a grammar production, it may reference the terminal and nonterminal symbols of the production alternative as if they were parameters of the algorithm. When used in this manner, nonterminal symbols refer to the actual alternative definition that is matched when parsing the source text. The source text matched by a grammar production is the portion of the source text that starts at the beginning of the first terminal that participated in the match and ends at the end of the last terminal that participated in the match.

When an algorithm is associated with a production alternative, the alternative is typically shown without any “[ ]” grammar annotations. Such annotations should only affect the syntactic recognition of the alternative and have no effect on the associated semantics for the alternative.

Syntax-directed operations are invoked with a parse node and, optionally, other parameters by using the conventions on steps 1, 3, and 4 in the following algorithm:

Let status be the result of performing SyntaxDirectedOperation of SomeNonTerminal.
Let someParseNode be the parse of some source text.
Perform SyntaxDirectedOperation of someParseNode.
Perform SyntaxDirectedOperation of someParseNode passing "value" as the argument.

Unless explicitly specified otherwise, all chain productions have an implicit definition for every operation that might be applied to that production's left-hand side nonterminal. The implicit definition simply reapplies the same operation with the same parameters, if any, to the chain production's sole right-hand side nonterminal and then returns the result. For example, assume that some algorithm has a step of the form: “Return the result of evaluating Block” and that there is a production:

Block

{

}

but the Evaluation operation does not associate an algorithm with that production. In that case, the Evaluation operation implicitly includes an association of the form:

Runtime Semantics: Evaluation

Block

{