9THE ABSTRACT SYNTAX TREE, HY, AND LISP-LIKE ATTRIBUTES
The abstract syntax tree (AST) is a representation of the structure of the source code of any programming language. Every language, including Python, has a specific AST; Python’s AST is built by parsing a Python source file. Like any tree, this one is made of nodes linked together. A node can represent an operation, a statement, an expression, or even a module. Each node can contain references to other nodes that make up the tree.
Python’s AST is not heavily documented and is thus hard to deal with at first glance, but understanding some deeper aspects of how Python is constructed can help ...
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