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I notice in that article that both Erlang and Elixir become "Erlang Abstract Form" before becoming "Core Erlang". What is the purpose of the abstract form vs. c
by dgllghr 8y ago
I notice in that article that both Erlang and Elixir become "Erlang Abstract Form" before becoming "Core Erlang". What is the purpose of the abstract form vs. core erlang? Why this intermediate step?
- micmus 8y ago"Erlang Abstract Form" is just a fancy name for an AST - a representation of the Erlang syntax in terms of Erlang data structures.
- macintux 8y agoParse transforms operate at the abstract form level, I believe. Virding talks a bit about it here: https://youtu.be/qm0mbQbc9Kc?t=12m00s https://youtu.be/qm0mbQbc9Kc?t=12m00s
- jacquesm 8y agoCompilers use many intermediate steps to transform the input on the way to their final destination, in this case bytecode. Each of these 'passes' performs one or more transformations with a specific goal for each transformation (for instance: an optimization). The Erlang Abstract Format is a parse tree representation for Erlang code.