4 General principles [intro]

In the syntax notation used in this document, syntactic categories are indicated by italic, sans-serif type, and literal words and characters in constant width type.

Alternatives are listed on separate lines except in a few cases where a long set of alternatives is marked by the phrase “one of”.

If the text of an alternative is too long to fit on a line, the text is continued on subsequent lines indented from the first one.

An optional terminal or non-terminal symbol is indicated by the subscript “${}_{opt}$”, so indicates an optional expression enclosed in braces.

Names for syntactic categories have generally been chosen according to the following rules:

• (2.1)
  X-name is a use of an identifier in a context that determines its meaning (e.g., class-name, typedef-name).
• (2.2)
  X-id is an identifier with no context-dependent meaning (e.g., qualified-id).
• (2.3)
  X-seq is one or more X's without intervening delimiters (e.g., declaration-seq is a sequence of declarations).
• (2.4)
  X-list is one or more X's separated by intervening commas (e.g., identifier-list is a sequence of identifiers separated by commas).