an advantage over bytecode, AST keeps the global program structure and relations between statements (which is lost in a bytecode representation), and when compressed provides a more compact representation. Thus, using AST has been proposed as a better intermediate format than bytecode. However, for interpreters, AST results in more overhead than a bytecode interpreter, because of nodes related to syntax performing no useful work, of a less sequential representation (requiring traversal of more pointers) and of overhead visiting the tree.

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