Subj : Re: Too permissive semicolon insertion?
To   : Brendan Eich
From : Igor Bukanov
Date : Mon Aug 23 2004 03:52 pm

Brendan Eich wrote:
> Igor Bukanov wrote:
> 
>> There is another case of this anomaly:
>>
>> 1 +
>> 2 3;
>>
>> Regards, Igor
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks -- this one's more recent than the other bug, and notice that it 
> bites only constant + expressions.  Fixed on the trunk, patch attached.

There is somewhat related issue. Consider

Label: break /*
*/ Label;

It is treated by SpiderMonkey as
Label: break Label;

which is syntactically valid. But according to ECMA-252, section 7.4:

Comments behave like white space and are discarded except that, if a 
MultiLineComment contains a line terminator character, then the entire 
comment is considered to be a LineTerminator for purposes of parsing by 
the syntactic grammar.

which I read that

Label: break /*
*/ Label;

should be treated as

Label: break
Label

which should be transformed into

Label: break;
Label

which is invalid.

Since MSIE behaves as SpiderMonkey and completely ignores eol in 
multiline comments, the behavior is conned in stone but I am curios why 
  ECMA 262 dictates this in the first place?

Regards, Igor

.