What's a valid left-hand-side expression in JavaScript grammar?

Question

Okay, we all know what the valid left-hand-side expressions are. Kind of.*

But, looking at the definition from the ECMA-Script standard, I'm very confused:

LeftHandSideExpression :
    NewExpression
    CallExpression

Is that just an error in the definition, or am I getting something wrong here? I mean, doesn't that actually mean that

new Object = 1; // NewExpression AssignmentOperator PrimaryExpression
function () { return foo; }() = 1;// CallExpression AssignmentOperator PrimaryExpression

are supposed to be valid assignment expressions?

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_{* From my humble understanding, this would make much more sense:}

LeftHandSideExpression :
    Identifier
    MemberExpression [ Expression ]
    MemberExpression . IdentifierName
    CallExpression [ Expression ]
    CallExpression . IdentifierName

Answer 1

To concisely answer your question, everything beneath the LeftHandSideExpression production is a valid LeftHandSideExpression.

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I think the question you are really asking is:

What is a valid LeftHandSideExpression and also assignable?

The answer to that is anything that resolves to a Reference which is a well defined concept in the specification. In your example

new Object = 1;

The new Object is a valid LeftHandSideExpression but it does not resolve to a Reference.

(new Object).x = 1;

The left hand side is a MemberExpression . IdentifierName which according to the spec the final step is:

Return a value of type Reference ...

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If you consider it 2 separate properties it makes a lot more sense.

1. Is it a valid LeftHandSideExpression?
2. Is it a valid reference?

Property 1 is determined in the syntactical analysis phase and property 2 is determined in the semantic analysis phase. Check out 8.7.2 PutValue (V, W) for more details.

Here is a full explanation in the specification itself:

8.7 The Reference Specification Type

The Reference type is used to explain the behaviour of such operators as delete, typeof, and the assignment operators. For example, the left-hand operand of an assignment is expected to produce a reference. The behaviour of assignment could, instead, be explained entirely in terms of a case analysis on the syntactic form of the left-hand operand of an assignment operator, but for one difficulty: function calls are permitted to return references. This possibility is admitted purely for the sake of host objects. No built-in ECMAScript function defined by this specification returns a reference and there is no provision for a user-defined function to return a reference. (Another reason not to use a syntactic case analysis is that it would be lengthy and awkward, affecting many parts of the specification.)

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After taking a look at your suggestion I believe it would throw off certain valid expressions (Note: I don't condone this.)

function OuterObj() {
    this.Name = "Outer";
    this.InnerObj = function() {
        this.Name = "Inner";
    }
}

var obj; (obj = new new OuterObj().InnerObj).Name = "Assigned";

This is a case where NewExpression is important