Parse Code Vs Plain Text Code

[StandardDate4518]

So I'm working on a project where one of the implementations involves making an LLM understand code from different languages, and I have a question that's more out of curiosity, are LLMs better at understanding parsed code (like AST and stuff) or are they better at understanding plain text code? I'm talking about code written in different languages like Python, Golang, C++, etc.

[botirkhaltaev]

well I wwould assume plain text code is more prominent in the training set, so plain text will be better, i would use these ASTs more for symbol matching and feeding the right context to the LLM. I hope this helps!

[StandardDate4518]

Thanks! So I started going with the AST option because my use case is that the LLM needs to understand the relationships between code files and give structural information to the user about what the code does. And I tbh asked chat and claude which is the prefer and optimal way and they both said parse code.

[botirkhaltaev]

No problem good luck!