What is the difference between JavaScript and ECMAScript

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What s the difference between ECMAScript and JavaScript  From what I ve deduced  ECMAScript is the standard and JavaScript is the implementation  Is this correct

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I doubt we d ever use the word  ECMAScript  if not for the fact that the name  JavaScript  is owned by Sun  For all intents and purposes  the language is JavaScript  You don t go to the bookstore looking for ECMAScript books  do you   It s a bit too simple to say that  JavaScript  is the implementation  JScript is Microsoft s implementation

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Existing answers paraphrase the main point quite well   The main point is that ECMAScript is the bare abstract language  without any domain specific extensions  it s useless in itself  The specification defines only the language and the core objects of it    While JavaScript and ActionScript and other dialects add the domain specific library to it  so you can use it for something meaningful   There are many ECMAScript engines  some of them are open source  others are proprietary  You can link them into your program then add your native functions to the global object so your program becomes scriptable  Although most often they are used in browsers

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ECMAScript is a standard for JavaScript  look at these statements from MDN     JavaScript     JavaScript  JS  is a lightweight interpreted or JIT-compiled   programming language with first-class functions  While it is most   well-known as the scripting language for Web pages  many non-browser   environments also use it  such as node js  Apache CouchDB and Adobe   Acrobat  JavaScript is a prototype-based  multi-paradigm  dynamic   language  supporting object-oriented  imperative  and declarative    e g  functional programming  styles  Read more about JavaScript      ECMAScript     The standard for JavaScript is ECMAScript  As of 2012  all modern   browsers fully support ECMAScript 5 1  Older browsers support at least   ECMAScript 3  On June 17  2015  ECMA International published the sixth   major version of ECMAScript  which is officially called ECMAScript   2015  and was initially referred to as ECMAScript 6 or ES6  Since   then  ECMAScript standards are on yearly release cycles  This   documentation refers to the latest draft version  which is currently   ECMAScript 2018    For more info  visit here

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What is ECMAScript i e  ES      ECMAScript is a standard for a scripting language and the   Javascript language is based on the ECMAScript standard    Is Javascript exactly the same as ECMAScript     No  Javascript is not exactly equivalent to ECMAScript   The core features of Javascript are based on the ECMAScript standard  but Javascript also has other additional features that are not in the ECMA specifications standard       JavaScript   ECMAScript   DOM API    DOM API like  document getElementById  id     Do other languages use the ECMAScript standard    Yes  there are languages other than JavaScript that also implement the ECMAScript Standard as their core   ActionScript  used by Adobe Flash  and JScript  used by Microsoft  are both languages that implement the ECMAScript standard     Why is it called ECMAScript    Javascript was originally created at Netscape  and they wanted to standardize the language  So  they submitted the language to the European Computer Manufacturer   s Association  ECMA  for standardization   But  there were trademark issues with the name Javascript  and the standard became called ECMAScript  which is the name it holds today as well   Because of trademark issues  Microsoft   s version of the language is called JScript     even though JScript is  at its core  the same language as Javascript

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In my understanding  ECMAScript is the  Theory  or  Specification   and Javascript is  Practicals  or  Implementation

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JavaScript is one branch of languages formed around the ECMAScript standard  I believe ECMA is the European Computer Manufacturers Association  not that this is really relevant or anything   Don t forget another popular language formed around the ECMA Script standard is ActionScript  used in Adobe Flash Flex

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JavaScript   ECMAScript   DOM   BOM     ECMAScript   Language Specification defines all logic for creating and editing objects  arrays  numbers  etc    DOM  Document Object Model  makes it possible to communicate with HTML XML documents  e g  document getElementById  id      BOM  Browser Object Model  is the hierarchy of browser objects  e g  location object  history object  form elements     History of JavaScript naming      Mocha   LiveScript   JavaScript    part of JS resulted in  ECMA-262   ECMAScript   JavaScript  consists of ECMAScript   DOM   BOM

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i know this is an old post but hopefully this will help someone   In the 1990   s different versions of js started coming out like javascript  from netscape  Js script from Microsoft  So ecmascript was introduced as a standard  But ecmascript forms only a part of javascript which specifies its core syntax types objects etc  Probably that explains the inconsistent implementations of javascript across diff  browsers  Reference - Wrox Professional Javascript For Web Developers

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Technically ECMAScript is the language that everyone is using and implementing -- it is the specification created many years ago when Netscape and Microsoft sat down and attempted to standardise the scripting between JavaScript  Netscape s scripting language  and JScript  Microsoft s    Subsequently all these engines are ostensibly implementing ECMAScript  however JavaScript  the name  now hangs around for both traditional naming reasons  and as a marketing term by Mozilla for their various non-standard extensions  which they want to be able to actually  version

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ECMAScript   ES    ECMAScript  is  a Standard  for  scripting  languages  Languages like Javascript are based  on  the  ECMAScript  standard  ECMA Standard is based  on  several  originating  technologies  the  most  well  known  being  JavaScript   Netscape   and  JScript   Microsoft   ECMA means  European  Computer  Manufacturer   s  Association   JavaScript   JS    JavaScript is the most popular implementation of the ECMAScript Standard  The  core  features  of  Javascript  are  based  on  the  ECMAScript  standard    but  Javascript  also  has  other  additional  features  that  are  not  in the  ECMA specifications standard  ActionScript and  JScript are other languages that implement the  ECMAScript  JavaScript was submitted to  ECMA for standardization but due to  trademark  issues with  the  name  Javascript the  standard  became  called  ECMAScript  Every  browser  has  a  JavaScript  interpreter    ES5   ECMAScript 5    ES5 is a version of the  ECMAScript  old current one   ES5 is the JavaScript you know and use in the browser today  ES5 does not require a build step  transpilers  to transform it into something that will run in today s browsers  ECMAScript  version  5  was  finished  in  December  2009    the  latest  versions  of  all  major  browsers   Chrome   Safari   Firefox   and  IE    have  implemented  version  5   Version  5 1  was  finished  in  June   2011    ES6   ECMAScript 6   ES2015   ECMAScript 2015    ES2015 is a version of the  ECMAScript  new future one   Officially the name ES2015 should be used instead of ES6  ES6  will  tackle  many  of  the  core  language  shortcomings  addressed  in   TypeScript  and  CoffeeScript  ES6 is the next iteration of JavaScript  but it does not run in today s browsers  There are quite a few transpilers that will export ES5 for running in browsers    BabelJS    BabelJS is the most popular transpiler that transforms new JavaScript ES6 to Old JavaScript ES5  BabelJS makes it possible for writing the next  generation of JavaScript today  means ES2015   BabelJS simply takes  ES2015 file and transform it into ES5 file  Current browsers versions can now understand the new JavaScript code  ES2015   even if they don t yet support it    TypeScript  and  CoffeeScript    Both provides syntactic  sugar  on  top  of  ES5   and  then  are  transcompiled  into  ES5  compliant  JavaScript    You write  TypeScript  or CoffeeScript then the  transpiler transforms it into ES5  JavaScript

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Javascript was the original name  meant to capitalize on the popularity of java   ECMA is the standards body that oversees the standard that was eventually put in place so the names are roughly equivalent   Implementations have other names  like V8 or Rhino  etc

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Various JavaScript versions are implementations of the ECMAScript standard

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Here are my findings   JavaScript  The Definitive Guide  written by David Flanagan provides a very concise explanation      JavaScript was created at Netscape in the early days of the Web  and   technically   JavaScript  is a trademark licensed from Sun   Microsystems  now Oracle  used to describe Netscape s  now Mozilla s    implementation of the language  Netscape submitted the language for   standardization to ECMA and because of trademark issues  the   standardized version of the language was stuck with the awkward name    ECMAScript   For the same trademark reasons  Microsoft s version of   the language is formally known as  JScript   In practice  just about   everyone calls the language JavaScript    A blog post by Microsoft seems to agree with what Flanagan explains by saying       ECMAScript is the official name for the JavaScript language we all   know and love       which makes me think all occurrences of JavaScript in this reference post  by Microsoft again  must be replaced by ECMASCript  They actually seem to be careful with using ECMAScript only in this  more recent and more technical documentation page   w3schools com seems to agree with the definitions above      JavaScript was invented by Brendan Eich in 1995  and became an ECMA   standard in 1997  ECMA-262 is the official name of the standard    ECMAScript is the official name of the language    The key here is  the official name of the language    If you check Mozilla  s JavaScript version pages  you will encounter the following statement      Deprecated  The explicit versioning and opt-in of language   features was Mozilla-specific and are in process of being removed    Firefox 4 was the last version which referred to a JavaScript version    1 8 5   With new ECMA standards  JavaScript language features are now   often mentioned with their initial definition in ECMA-262 Editions   such as ECMAScript 2015    and when you see the recent release notes  you will always see reference to ECMAScript standards  such as         The ES2015 Symbol toStringTag property has been implemented  bug 1114580     The ES2015 TypedArray prototype toString   and    TypedArray prototype toLocaleString   methods have been implemented    bug 1121938        Mozilla Web Docs also has a page that explains the difference between ECMAScript and JavaScript      However  the umbrella term  JavaScript  as understood in a web browser   context contains several very different elements  One of them is the   core language  ECMAScript   another is the collection of the Web APIs    including the DOM  Document Object Model     Conclusion  To my understanding  people use the word JavaScript somewhat liberally to refer to the core ECMAScript specification   I would say  all the modern JavaScript implementations  or JavaScript Engines  are in fact ECMAScript implementations  Check the definition of the V8 Engine from Google  for example       V8 is Google   s open source high-performance JavaScript engine  written   in C   and used in Google Chrome  the open source browser from Google    and in Node js  among others  It implements ECMAScript as specified in   ECMA-262    They seem to use the word JavaScript and ECMAScript interchangeably  and I would say it is actually an ECMAScript engine   So most JavaScript Engines are actually implementing the ECMAScript standard  but instead of calling them ECMAScript engines  they call themselves JavaScript Engines  This answer also supports the way I see the situation

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JavaScript is a ECMAScript language    ECMAScript isn t necessarily JavaScript

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I think a little history lesson is due   JavaScript was originally named Mocha and changed to Livescript but ultimately became JavaScript   It s important to note that JavaScript came before ECMAscript and the history will tell you why   To start from the beginning  JavaScript derived its name from Java and initially Brendan Eich  the creator of JS  was asked to develop a language that resembled Java for the web for Netscape   Eich  however decided that Java was too complicated with all its rules and so set out to create a simpler language that even a beginner could code in   This is evident in such things like the relaxing of the need to have a semicolon   After the language was complete  the marketing team of Netscape requested Sun to allow them to name it JavaScript as a marketing stunt and hence why most people who have never used JavaScript think it s related to Java   About a year or two after JavaScript s release in the browser  Microsoft s IE took the language and started making its own implementations such as JScript  At the same time  IE was dominating the market and not long after Netscape had to shut its project   Before Netscape went down  they decided to start a standard that would guide the path of JavaScript  named ECMAScript   ECMAScript had a few releases and in 1999 they released their last version  ECMAScript 3  before they went into hibernation for the next 10 years   During this 10 years  Microsoft dominated the scenes but at the same time they weren t improving their product and hence Firefox was born  led by Eich  and a whole heap of other browsers such as Chrome  Opera   ECMAScript released its 5th Edition in 2009  the 4th edition was abandoned  with features such as strict mode   Since then  ECMAScript has gained a lot of momentum and is scheduled to release its 6th Edition in a few months from now with the biggest changes its had thus far   You can use a list of features for ECMAScript 6 here http   kangax github io es5-compat-table es6  and also the browser support   You can even start writing Ecmascript 6 like you do with CoffeeScript and use a compiler to compile down to Ecmascript 5   Whether ECMAScript is the language and JavaScript is a dialect is arguable  but not important  If you continue to think like this it might confuse you   There is no compiler out there that would run ECMAScript  and I believe JavaScript is considered the Language which implements a standard called ECMAScript   There are also other noticeable languages that implement ECMAScript such as ActionScript  used for Flash

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ECMAScript is the language  whereas JavaScript  JScript  and even ActionScript 3 are called  dialects   Wikipedia sheds some light on this

[javascript] What is the difference between JavaScript and ECMAScript?

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