5.1.3 The Numeric String Grammar

A second grammar is used for translating strings into numeric values. This grammar is similar to the part of the lexical grammar having to do with numeric literals and has as its terminal symbols the characters of the Unicode character set. This grammar appears in 9.3.1.

Productions of the numeric string grammar are distinguished by having three colons ":::" as punctuation.

5.1.4 The Syntactic Grammar

The syntactic grammar for ECMAScript is given in clauses 11, 12, 13 and 14. This grammar has ECMAScript tokens defined by the lexical grammar as its terminal symbols (5.1.2). It defines a set of productions, starting from the goal symbol Program, that describe how sequences of tokens can form syntactically correct ECMAScript programs.

When a stream of Unicode characters is to be parsed as an ECMAScript program, it is first converted to a stream of input elements by repeated application of the lexical grammar; this stream of input elements is then parsed by a single application of the syntax grammar. The program is syntactically in error if the tokens in the stream of input elements cannot be parsed as a single instance of the goal nonterminal Program, with no tokens left over.

Productions of the syntactic grammar are distinguished by having just one colon ":" as punctuation. The syntactic grammar as presented in sections 0, 0, 0 and 0 is actually not a complete account of which token sequences are accepted as correct ECMAScript programs. Certain additional token sequences are also accepted, namely, those that would be described by the grammar if only semicolons were added to the sequence in certain places (such as before line terminator characters). Furthermore, certain token sequences that are described by the grammar are not considered acceptable if a terminator character appears in certain "awkward" places.