Meta-Programming and the Abstract Syntax Tree

AST is a data structure composed of the following elements:

Quote Literals

• :atom
• 1nteger
• f.loat
• “string”
• [“l”, “i”, “s”, “t”]
• {“2-element”, :tuple}

3-Element Tuples

The building block of an Elixir program is a tuple with three elements

• variables {name, meta, context}
• calls {function, context/meta, arguments}

“Calls” such as sum(1, 2, 3) create ASTs such as {:sum, meta, [1, 2, 3]}.