> You cannot "examine the code" without executing it, partially or in full, with some input or intermediate values or (symbolically) with all of them. It is en

> You cannot "examine the code" without executing it, partially or in full, with some input or intermediate values or (symbolically) with all of them. It is entirely possible to break a stream of text down into symbols and examine the relationship of those symbols without evaluating (i.e. executing) them. It is not really necessary or possible to know their meaning/definition at all, only their "shape" or the "part of speech" that they represent. In the simplest form, static analyzers are a set of heuristic pattern matchers that a stream of text is sent through. It might get fancy and build an AST first, but that still does not constitute execution or evaluation in the technical sense.