csswg-drafts/css21/grammar.html at 71bff296a92fab5e9555d01951792e5115a51077 · w3c/csswg-drafts · GitHub

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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN">
<html lang="en">

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Grammar of CSS&nbsp;2.1</TITLE>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style/default.css" type="text/css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/TR/W3C-REC.css" type="text/css">
<link rel="prev" href="propidx.html">
<link rel="next" href="leftblank.html">
<link rel="contents" href="cover.html#minitoc">
<link rel="CSS-properties" href="propidx.html" title="properties">
<link rel="index" href="indexlist.html" title="index">
<link rel="first" href="cover.html">

</HEAD>
<BODY>
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<H1><a name="q25.0">Appendix G. Grammar of CSS&nbsp;2.1</a></H1>
<div class="subtoc">
<p><strong>Contents</strong>
  <ul class="toc">
    <li class="tocline2"><a href="grammar.html#grammar" class="tocxref">G.1 Grammar</a>
    <li class="tocline2"><a href="grammar.html#scanner" class="tocxref">G.2 Lexical scanner</a>
    <li class="tocline2"><a href="grammar.html#tokenizer-diffs" class="tocxref">G.3 Comparison of tokenization in CSS&nbsp;2.1 and CSS1</a>
    <li class="tocline2"><a href="grammar.html#q25.4" class="tocxref">G.4 Implementation note</a>
  </ul>
</div>
<!-- warning -->
<div> <input id=annoying-warning type=checkbox title="hide note"> <label for=annoying-warning>(hide)</label> <div class=annoying-warning> <p><strong>Note:</strong> Several sections of this specification have been updated by other specifications. Please, see <a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS/#css" >"Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) &mdash; The Official Definition"</a> in the latest <cite>CSS Snapshot</cite> for a list of specifications and the sections they replace. <p>The CSS Working Group is also developing <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS22/" >CSS level&nbsp;2 revision&nbsp;2 (CSS&nbsp;2.2).</a> </div> </div>
<!-- /warning -->

<p>This appendix is non-normative.

<P>The grammar below defines the syntax of CSS&nbsp;2.1. It is in some sense,
however, a superset of CSS&nbsp;2.1 as this specification imposes additional
semantic constraints not expressed in this grammar. A conforming UA
must also adhere to the <a href="./syndata.html#syntax">
forward-compatible parsing rules</a>, the selectors notation, the <a
href="./about.html#property-defs">property and value notation</a>,
and the unit notation. However, not all syntactically correct CSS can take
effect, since the document language may impose restrictions that are
not in CSS, e.g., HTML imposes restrictions on the possible values of
the "class" attribute.

<h2>G.1 <a name="grammar">Grammar</a></h2>

<P> The grammar below is <a name="x0"><span class="index-inst"
title="LALR(1)">LALR(1)</span></a> (but note that most UA's should not use it
directly, since it does not express the <a
href="syndata.html#parsing-errors">parsing conventions</a>, only the
CSS&nbsp;2.1 syntax). The format of the productions is optimized for human
consumption and some shorthand notation beyond Yacc (see <a href="refs.html#ref-YACC" rel="biblioentry" class="noxref"><span class="normref">[YACC]</span></a>) is
used:</P>

<ul>
<li><strong>*</strong>: 0 or more
<li><strong>+</strong>: 1 or more
<li><strong>?</strong>: 0 or 1
<li><strong>|</strong>: separates alternatives
<li><strong>[&nbsp;]</strong>: grouping
</ul>

<p>The productions are:

<pre>
stylesheet
  : [ CHARSET_SYM STRING ';' ]?
    [S|CDO|CDC]* [ import [ CDO S* | CDC S* ]* ]*
    [ [ ruleset | media | page ] [ CDO S* | CDC S* ]* ]*
  ;
import
  : IMPORT_SYM S*
    [STRING|URI] S* media_list? ';' S*
  ;
media
  : MEDIA_SYM S* media_list '{' S* ruleset* '}' S*
  ;
media_list
  : medium [ COMMA S* medium]*
  ;
medium
  : IDENT S*
  ;
page
  : PAGE_SYM S* pseudo_page?
    '{' S* declaration? [ ';' S* declaration? ]* '}' S*
  ;
pseudo_page
  : ':' IDENT S*
  ;
operator
  : '/' S* | ',' S*
  ;
combinator
  : '+' S*
  | '>' S*
  ;
unary_operator
  : '-' | '+'
  ;
property
  : IDENT S*
  ;
ruleset
  : selector [ ',' S* selector ]*
    '{' S* declaration? [ ';' S* declaration? ]* '}' S*
  ;
<a name="x1"><span class="index-inst" title="selector">selector</span></a>
  : simple_selector [ combinator selector | S+ [ combinator? selector ]? ]?
  ;
simple_selector
  : element_name [ HASH | class | attrib | pseudo ]*
  | [ HASH | class | attrib | pseudo ]+
  ;
class
  : '.' IDENT
  ;
element_name
  : IDENT | '*'
  ;
attrib
  : '[' S* IDENT S* [ [ '=' | INCLUDES | DASHMATCH ] S*
    [ IDENT | STRING ] S* ]? ']'
  ;
pseudo
  : ':' [ IDENT | FUNCTION S* [IDENT S*]? ')' ]
  ;
declaration
  : property ':' S* expr prio?
  ;
prio
  : IMPORTANT_SYM S*
  ;
expr
  : term [ operator? term ]*
  ;
term
  : unary_operator?
    [ NUMBER S* | PERCENTAGE S* | LENGTH S* | EMS S* | EXS S* | ANGLE S* |
      TIME S* | FREQ S* ]
  | STRING S* | IDENT S* | URI S* | hexcolor | function
  ;
function
  : FUNCTION S* expr ')' S*
  ;
/*
 * There is a constraint on the <a name="x2"><span class="index-inst" title="color">color</span></a> that it must
 * have either 3 or 6 hex-digits (i.e., [0-9a-fA-F])
 * after the "#"; e.g., "#000" is OK, but "#abcd" is not.
 */
hexcolor
  : HASH S*
  ;
</pre>

<h2>G.2 <a name="scanner">Lexical scanner</a></h2>

<p> The following is the <a name="x3"><span class="index-def"
title="tokenizer">tokenizer</span></a>, written in Flex (see <a href="refs.html#ref-FLEX" rel="biblioentry" class="noxref"><span class="normref">[FLEX]</span></a>)
notation. The tokenizer is case-insensitive.

<p>The "\377" represents the highest character
number that current versions of Flex can deal with (decimal 255). It
should be read as "\4177777" (decimal 1114111), which is the highest
possible code point in <a name="x4"><span class="index-inst"
title="unicode">Unicode</span></a>/<a name="x5"><span class="index-inst"
title="iso-10646">ISO-10646</span></a>.

<pre>
%option case-insensitive

h		[0-9a-f]
nonascii	[\240-\377]
unicode		\\{h}{1,6}(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?
escape		{unicode}|\\[^\r\n\f0-9a-f]
nmstart		[_a-z]|{nonascii}|{escape}
nmchar		[_a-z0-9-]|{nonascii}|{escape}
string1		\"([^\n\r\f\\"]|\\{nl}|{escape})*\"
string2		\'([^\n\r\f\\']|\\{nl}|{escape})*\'
badstring1      \"([^\n\r\f\\"]|\\{nl}|{escape})*\\?
badstring2      \'([^\n\r\f\\']|\\{nl}|{escape})*\\?
badcomment1     \/\*[^*]*\*+([^/*][^*]*\*+)*
badcomment2     \/\*[^*]*(\*+[^/*][^*]*)*
baduri1         url\({w}([!#$%&*-\[\]-~]|{nonascii}|{escape})*{w}
baduri2         url\({w}{string}{w}
baduri3         url\({w}{badstring}
comment		\/\*[^*]*\*+([^/*][^*]*\*+)*\/
ident		-?{nmstart}{nmchar}*
name		{nmchar}+
num		[0-9]+|[0-9]*"."[0-9]+
string		{string1}|{string2}
badstring       {badstring1}|{badstring2}
badcomment      {badcomment1}|{badcomment2}
baduri          {baduri1}|{baduri2}|{baduri3}
url		([!#$%&amp;*-~]|{nonascii}|{escape})*
s		[ \t\r\n\f]+
w		{s}?
nl		\n|\r\n|\r|\f

A		a|\\0{0,4}(41|61)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?
C		c|\\0{0,4}(43|63)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?
D		d|\\0{0,4}(44|64)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?
E		e|\\0{0,4}(45|65)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?
G		g|\\0{0,4}(47|67)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\g
H		h|\\0{0,4}(48|68)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\h
I		i|\\0{0,4}(49|69)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\i
K		k|\\0{0,4}(4b|6b)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\k
L               l|\\0{0,4}(4c|6c)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\l
M		m|\\0{0,4}(4d|6d)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\m
N		n|\\0{0,4}(4e|6e)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\n
O		o|\\0{0,4}(4f|6f)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\o
P		p|\\0{0,4}(50|70)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\p
R		r|\\0{0,4}(52|72)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\r
S		s|\\0{0,4}(53|73)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\s
T		t|\\0{0,4}(54|74)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\t
U               u|\\0{0,4}(55|75)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\u
X		x|\\0{0,4}(58|78)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\x
Z		z|\\0{0,4}(5a|7a)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\z

%%

{s}			{return S;}

\/\*[^*]*\*+([^/*][^*]*\*+)*\/		/* ignore comments */
{badcomment}                         /* unclosed comment at EOF */

"&lt;!--"		{return CDO;}
"-->"			{return CDC;}
"~="			{return INCLUDES;}
"|="			{return DASHMATCH;}

{string}		{return STRING;}
{badstring}             {return BAD_STRING;}

{ident}			{return IDENT;}

"#"{name}		{return HASH;}

@{I}{M}{P}{O}{R}{T}	{return IMPORT_SYM;}
@{P}{A}{G}{E}		{return PAGE_SYM;}
@{M}{E}{D}{I}{A}	{return MEDIA_SYM;}
"@charset "		{return CHARSET_SYM;}

"!"({w}|{comment})*{I}{M}{P}{O}{R}{T}{A}{N}{T}	{return IMPORTANT_SYM;}

{num}{E}{M}		{return EMS;}
{num}{E}{X}		{return EXS;}
{num}{P}{X}		{return LENGTH;}
{num}{C}{M}		{return LENGTH;}
{num}{M}{M}		{return LENGTH;}
{num}{I}{N}		{return LENGTH;}
{num}{P}{T}		{return LENGTH;}
{num}{P}{C}		{return LENGTH;}
{num}{D}{E}{G}		{return ANGLE;}
{num}{R}{A}{D}		{return ANGLE;}
{num}{G}{R}{A}{D}	{return ANGLE;}
{num}{M}{S}		{return TIME;}
{num}{S}		{return TIME;}
{num}{H}{Z}		{return FREQ;}
{num}{K}{H}{Z}		{return FREQ;}
{num}{ident}		{return DIMENSION;}

{num}%			{return PERCENTAGE;}
{num}			{return NUMBER;}

"url("{w}{string}{w}")" {return URI;}
"url("{w}{url}{w}")"    {return URI;}
{baduri}                {return BAD_URI;}

{ident}"("		{return FUNCTION;}

.			{return *yytext;}
</pre>

<h2>G.3 <a name="tokenizer-diffs">Comparison of tokenization in CSS&nbsp;2.1 and
CSS1</a></h2>

<p>There are some differences in the syntax specified in the CSS1
recommendation (<a href="refs.html#ref-CSS1" rel="biblioentry" class=&qu
824C
ot;noxref"><span class="informref">[CSS1]</span></a>), and the one above. Most of these are due
to new tokens in CSS2 that did not exist in CSS1. Others are because
the grammar has been rewritten to be more readable. However, there are
some incompatible changes, that were felt to be errors in the CSS1
syntax. They are explained below.

<ul>
<li>CSS1 style sheets could only be in 1-byte-per-character
encodings, such as ASCII and ISO-8859-1. CSS&nbsp;2.1 has no such
limitation. In practice, there was little difficulty in extrapolating
the CSS1 tokenizer, and some UAs have accepted 2-byte encodings.

<li>CSS1 only allowed four hex-digits after the backslash (\) to refer
to Unicode characters, CSS2 <a
href="syndata.html#escaped-characters">allows six</a>. Furthermore,
CSS2 allows a white space character to delimit the escape
sequence. E.g., according to CSS1, the string "\abcdef" has 3 letters
(\abcd, e, and f), according to CSS2 it has only one (\abcdef).

<li>The tab character (ASCII 9) was not allowed in strings. However,
since strings in CSS1 were only used for font names and for URLs, the
only way this can lead to incompatibility between CSS1 and CSS2 is if
a style sheet contains a font family that has a tab in its name.

<li>Similarly, newlines (<a href="syndata.html#strings">escaped with a
backslash</a>) were not allowed in strings in CSS1.

<li>CSS2 parses a number immediately followed by an identifier as a
DIMENSION token (i.e., an unknown unit), CSS1 parsed it as a number and an
identifier. That means that in CSS1, the declaration 'font:
10pt/1.2serif' was correct, as was 'font: 10pt/12pt serif'; in CSS2, a
space is required before "serif". (Some UAs accepted the first
example, but not the second.)

<li>In CSS1, a class name could start with a digit (".55ft"), unless
it was a dimension (".55in"). In CSS2, such classes are parsed as
unknown dimensions (to allow for future additions of new units). To
make ".55ft" a valid class, CSS2 requires the first digit to be
escaped (".\35 5ft")
</ul>

<h2><a name="q25.4">G.4 Implementation note</a></h2>

<p>The lexical scanner for the CSS core syntax in <a
href="syndata.html#tokenization">section&nbsp;4.1.1</a> can be
implemented as a scanner without back-up. In Lex notation, that
requires the addition of the following patterns (which do not change
the returned tokens, only the efficiency of the scanner):

<pre>
{ident}/\\          return IDENT;
#{name}/\\          return HASH;
@{ident}/\\         return ATKEYWORD;
#/\\                return DELIM;
@/\\                return DELIM;
@/-                 return DELIM;
@/-\\               return DELIM;
-/\\                return DELIM;
-/-                 return DELIM;
\&lt;/!                return DELIM;
\&lt;/!-               return DELIM;
{num}{ident}/\\     return DIMENSION;
{num}/\\            return NUMBER;
{num}/-             return NUMBER;
{num}/-\\           return NUMBER;
[0-9]+/\.           return NUMBER;
u/\+                return IDENT;
u\+[0-9a-f?]{1,6}/- return UNICODE_RANGE;
</pre>

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