From: "baweaver (Brandon Weaver) via ruby-core" Date: 2026-04-14T06:12:52+00:00 Subject: [ruby-core:125257] [Ruby Feature#21795] Methods for retrieving ASTs Issue #21795 has been updated by baweaver (Brandon Weaver). matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto) wrote in #note-11: > I'm not sure ast is the right name. The nodes returned by Prism retain concrete information such as positions, whitespace, and comments, making them closer to a Concrete Syntax Tree than an Abstract Syntax Tree. A name like node or syntax_tree might be more accurate. Might I recommend `to_ast`? It would be more in line with common Ruby coercion patterns, and would very quickly indicate that it is a coercion method from `Object` to an AST variation. I fear that `node` would be overloaded with various graph and tree-like algorithms. Likewise `to_syntax_tree` may be workable, but I'm still more partial towards `to_ast`. ---------------------------------------- Feature #21795: Methods for retrieving ASTs https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21795#change-117001 * Author: kddnewton (Kevin Newton) * Status: Open ---------------------------------------- I would like to propose a handful of methods for retrieving ASTs from various objects that correspond to locations in code. This includes: * Proc#ast * Method#ast * UnboundMethod#ast * Thread::Backtrace::Location#ast * TracePoint#ast (on call/return events) The purpose of this is to make tooling easier to write and maintain. Specifically, this would be able to be used in irb, power_assert, error_highlight, and various other tools both in core and not that make use of source code. There have been many previous discussions of retrieving node_id, source_location, source, etc. All of these use cases are covered by returning the AST for some entity. In this case node_id becomes an implementation detail, invisible to the user. Source location can be derived from the information on the AST itself. Similarly, source can be derived from the AST. Internally, I do not think we have to store any more information than we already do (since we have node_id for the first four of these, it becomes rather trivial). For TracePoint we can have a larger discussion about it, but I think it should not be too much work. In terms of implementation, the only caveat I would put is that if the ISEQ were compiled through the old parser/compiler, this should return `nil`, as the node ids do not match up and we do not want to further propagate the RubyVM::AST API. The reason I am opening up this ticket with 5 different methods requested in it is to get approval first for the direction, then I can open individual tickets or just PRs for each method. I believe this feature would ease the maintenance burden of many core libraries, and unify otherwise disparate efforts to achieve the same thing. -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/ ______________________________________________ ruby-core mailing list -- ruby-core@ml.ruby-lang.org To unsubscribe send an email to ruby-core-leave@ml.ruby-lang.org ruby-core info -- https://ml.ruby-lang.org/mailman3/lists/ruby-core.ml.ruby-lang.org/