Glossary

AST

The Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) is a tree data structure representing a piece of source code.

FCS

FSharp.Compiler.Service (FCS) is a collection of APIs and Services derived from the F# compiler source code.

PR

A Pull Request (PR) is a unit of proposed changes to a version control repository. See here for Fantomas-specific rules.

Range

A data structure modeling the exact place and size of a node or language construct in the source code.
A range has a start and end position. A position is composed of a line number and a column number.

Style Guide

The F# Style Guide. The set of formatting rules Fantomas implements.

Syntax Node

A node in the AST. A node can represent different types of syntax, e.g. a Record or a Lambda.

Trivia

Trivia has two meanings, depending on the context it is used in.

Fantomas

Used to label items (blank lines, code comments, conditional directives) that are not fully captured by the F# compiler in the AST.

FSharp.Compiler.Service

Additional information captured in the syntax tree, which the compiler does not need to compile the source code.

Trivia Node

A trivia node can contain trivia, either as content before or content after. A trivia node is a generalized type that serves as a common denominator for all AST node types.
Trivia nodes are used to construct a hierarchical tree-like structure in which every node can have multiple child nodes and each node has one parent node.

Typed Syntax Tree

The AST from the FCS carrying typed information about the processed source code. It is contructed from the Untyped Syntax Tree.
Fantomas does not use this AST to format the source code.

Untyped Syntax Tree

The AST from the FCS used by Fantomas. It represents the source code as it was processed by the F# compiler. The Untyped Syntax Tree doesn't carry any information regarding the validity of the source code or semantics. In a later compilation stage, the Untyped Syntax Tree is transformed into the Typed Syntax Tree.