JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 7th Edition

Chapter 2. Lexical Structure

The lexical structure of a programming language is the set of elementary rules that specifies how you write programs in that language. It is the lowest-level syntax of a language: it specifies what variable names look like, the delimiter characters for comments, and how one program statement is separated from the next, for example. This short chapter documents the lexical structure of JavaScript. It covers:

• Case sensitivity, spaces, and line breaks

• Comments

• Literals

• Identifiers and reserved words

• Unicode

• Optional semicolons

2.1 The Text of a JavaScript Program

JavaScript is a case-sensitive language. This means that language keywords, variables, function names, and other identifiers must always be typed with a consistent capitalization of letters. The while keyword, for example, must be typed “while,” not “While” or “WHILE.” Similarly, online, Online, OnLine, and ONLINE are four distinct variable names.

JavaScript ignores spaces that appear between tokens in programs. For the most part, JavaScript also ignores line breaks (but see §2.6 for an exception). Because you can use spaces and newlines freely in your programs, you can format and indent your programs in a neat and consistent way that makes the code easy to read and understand.

In addition to the regular space character (\u0020), JavaScript also recognizes tabs, assorted ASCII control characters, and various Unicode space characters as whitespace. JavaScript recognizes newlines, ...