I can see that, but it doesn't feel quite right. The tree you get directly from deserialized source text is still a bit more fine grained than I'd expect a true AST to be.
To see what I mean, consider this:
(if condition 1 2 3)
This expression can be deserialized into a Lisp data structure, but it still contains a syntax error, and I don't think a true AST would be able to represent that syntax error.
To see what I mean, consider this:
This expression can be deserialized into a Lisp data structure, but it still contains a syntax error, and I don't think a true AST would be able to represent that syntax error.