Abstract syntax tree: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:49, 27 August 2024

Revision as of 21:50, 27 August 2024

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<big><span lang="ru">An</span></big> '''abstract syntax tree''' ('''AST''') is a data structure used in [[computer science]] to represent the structure of a program or code snippet. It is a [[Tree (data structure)|tree]] representation of the [[abstract syntax|abstract syntactic]] structure of text (often [[source code]]) written in a [[formal language]]. Each node of the tree denotes a construct occurring in the text. It is sometimes called just a '''syntax tree'''.

The syntax is "abstract" in the sense that it does not represent every detail appearing in the real syntax, but rather just the structural or content-related details. For instance, grouping [[Bracket#Parentheses|parentheses]] are implicit in the tree structure, so these do not have to be represented as separate nodes. Likewise, a syntactic construct like an if-condition-then statement may be denoted by means of a single node with three branches.