JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 6th Edition

Primary Expressions

The simplest expressions, known as primary expressions, are those that stand alone—they do not include any simpler expressions. Primary expressions in JavaScript are constant or literal values, certain language keywords, and variable references.

Literals are constant values that are embedded directly in your program. They look like these:

1.23         // A number literal
"hello"      // A string literal
/pattern/    // A regular expression literal

JavaScript syntax for number literals was covered in Numbers. String literals were documented in Text. The regular expression literal syntax was introduced in Pattern Matching and will be documented in detail in Chapter 10.

Some of JavaScript’s reserved words are primary expressions:

true      // Evalutes to the boolean true value
false     // Evaluates to the boolean false value
null      // Evaluates to the null value
this      // Evaluates to the "current" object

We learned about true, false, and null in Boolean Values and null and undefined. Unlike the other keywords, this is not a constant—it evaluates to different values in different places in the program. The this keyword is used in object-oriented programming. Within the body of a method, this evaluates to the object on which the method was invoked. See Invocation Expressions, Chapter 8 (especially Method Invocation), and Chapter 9 for more on this.

Finally, the third type of primary expression is the bare variable reference:

i             // Evaluates to the value of the variable i.
sum           // Evaluates to the value ...