9.2 Grammars

This specification presents the syntax of the C# programming language using

two grammars. The lexical

grammar (§9.2.1) defines how Unicode characters are combined to form line

terminators, white space,

comments, tokens, and pre-processing directives. The syntactic grammar (§9.2

.2) defines how the tokens

resulting from the lexical grammar are combined to form C# programs.

9.2.1 Lexical grammar

The lexical grammar of C# is presented in §9.3, §9.4, and §9.5. The

terminal symbols of the lexical grammar are

the characters of the Unicode character set, and the lexical grammar

specifies how characters are combined to

form tokens (§9.4), white space (§9.3.3), comments (§9.3.2), and

pre-processing directives (§9.5).

Every source file in a C# program must conform to the input production of

the lexical grammar (§9.3).

9.2.2 Syntactic grammar

The syntactic grammar of C# is presented in the chapters and appendices

that follow this chapter. The terminal

symbols of the syntactic grammar are the tokens defined by the lexical

grammar, and the syntactic grammar

specifies how tokens are combined to form C# programs.

Every source file in a C# program must conform to the compilation-unit

production (§16.1) of the syntactic

grammar.