How to use EBNF groups properly in Jison

Question

I am trying to figure out how to deal with a situation I am having while using the EBNF extension in Jison (Jison by default supports only BNF -- you can activate that option on a need basis).

I am trying to write a simple XML parser. In XML, there are empty tags and non-empty tags. Non-empty tags have a start tag, content, and then and end tag again. The content EBNF rule is defined as follows:

Content
    : CHARDATA? (Element CHARDATA?)* {
            var children = [];
            $1 && children.push($1);

            /* This will contain an array of all elements 
                             but no character data ?! */
            $2 && children.push($2);

            $$ = children;
        }
    ;

Now, I understood by debugging that Jison will assign the capture group to $2 and pass matches in an array. This makes sense as I expect to have a list of matches here. But what really boggles me is why in the contained array, there is only the elements and no character data.

Assume this input string, for example:

<a>h<x/>i<y/>j</a>

Now, the rule above will yield a representation for h, x, and y. But i and j will be missing.

I assume I am missing something but don't know what it could be...

I can provide the full grammar if needed but tried to isolate the problem.

Many thanks in advance!

Best regards, Harald