> to realize a DSL one must have an AST Not necessarily. I think a parser combinator library counts as a DSL. Yet, the result from using that DSL is normally a

> to realize a DSL one must have an AST Not necessarily. I think a parser combinator library counts as a DSL. Yet, the result from using that DSL is normally a function that you run to parse from sources. IOW, the DSL functions take functions and return functions built from them. You can't introspect that.