Abstract Syntactic Tree (AST)

An abstract syntax tree, also called an AST, is a tree representation of the abstract syntactic structure of PHP source code.

It is a representation of the code, that focuses on the syntactic elements that are later executed.

Documentation

See also PHP AST viewer.

Related : Parser, Analysis, Token, Homoiconicity, Hygienic Macro, Lexical Analysis, Pattern-Based Analysis, Semantic Analysis, ANTLR4, Code Generation, Compiler, Multi-pass Algorithm

Added in PHP 7.0