Why does JS code “var a = document.querySelector(‘a[data-a=1]’);” cause error?

From the selectors specification:

Attribute values must be CSS identifiers or strings.

Identifiers cannot start with a number. Strings must be quoted.

1 is therefore neither a valid identifier nor a string.

Use "1" (which is a string) instead.

var a = document.querySelector('a[data-a="1"]');