12.3 Line Terminators

Like white space code points, line terminator code points are used to improve source text readability and to separate tokens (indivisible lexical units) from each other. However, unlike white space code points, line terminators have some influence over the behaviour of the syntactic grammar. In general, line terminators may occur between any two tokens, but there are a few places where they are forbidden by the syntactic grammar. Line terminators also affect the process of automatic semicolon insertion (12.10). A line terminator cannot occur within any token except a StringLiteral, Template, or TemplateSubstitutionTail. <LF> and <CR> line terminators cannot occur within a StringLiteral token except as part of a LineContinuation.

A line terminator can occur within a MultiLineComment but cannot occur within a SingleLineComment.

Line terminators are included in the set of white space code points that are matched by the \s class in regular expressions.

The ECMAScript line terminator code points are listed in Table 37.

Only the Unicode code points in Table 37 are treated as line terminators. Other new line or line breaking Unicode code points are not treated as line terminators but are treated as white space if they meet the requirements listed in Table 36. The sequence <CR><LF> is commonly used as a line terminator. It should be considered a single SourceCharacter for the purpose of reporting line numbers.

Syntax