parsed representation of the grammar of a computer language. This parsed representation is stored in a tree structure. For example, the grammar of a SQL statement must be parsed into a parse tree before it can be understood and executed by a computer.
A parse tree or concrete syntax tree is a tree that represents the syntactic structure of a string according to some formal grammar. A program that produces such trees is called a parser. Parse trees may be generated for sentences in natural languages (see natural language processing), as well as during processing of computer languages, such as programming languages.