ECMA-262

)

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

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.

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. 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).

Calls to abstract operations return Completion Records. Abstract operations referenced using the functional application style and the method application style that are prefixed by ? indicate that ReturnIfAbrupt should be applied to the resulting Completion Record. For example, ? operationName() is equivalent to ReturnIfAbrupt(operationName()). Similarly, ? someValue.operationName() is equivalent to ReturnIfAbrupt(someValue.operationName()).

The prefix ! is used to indicate that an abstract operation will never return an abrupt completion and that the resulting Completion Record's value field should be used in place of the return value of the operation. For example, “Let val be ! operationName()” is equivalent to the following algorithm steps:

Let val be operationName().
Assert: val is never an abrupt completion.
If val is a Completion Record, let val be val.[[Value]].

Algorithms may be associated with productions of 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.

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.

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

Block

{

}

but there is no corresponding Evaluation algorithm that is explicitly specified for that production. If in some algorithm there is a statement of the form: “Return the result of evaluating Block” it is implicit that an Evaluation algorithm exists of the form:

Runtime Semantics: Evaluation

Block

{