What is AST in solidity

Question

I really often meet the abbreviation AST but don't really get what it means. I suppose it is a kind of output file that the compiler generates but what exactly is in it?

Answer 1

AST is an abbreviation for Abstract Syntax Tree. It is a concept in computer science that represents the structure of a program's source code for the compiler to use, and is usually the result of the syntax analysis phase of a compiler. This tree also helps viewing the structure of the source code similar to how the DOM helps viewing the structure of a HTML file. An application of AST is in static code analysis, in which automated tools can traverse the AST of a program to find syntax errors and bad patterns in the code without actually executing it, a process which helps debugging in programming Solidity.

See:

https://medium.com/@obernardovieira/why-is-ast-so-important-b1e7d6c29260

https://deepsource.io/glossary/ast/