---
title: Introduction
---

# Introduction

Tree-sitter is a parser generator tool and an incremental parsing library. It can build a concrete syntax tree for a source file and efficiently update the syntax tree as the source file is edited. Tree-sitter aims to be:

* **General** enough to parse any programming language
* **Fast** enough to parse on every keystroke in a text editor
* **Robust** enough to provide useful results even in the presence of syntax errors
* **Dependency-free** so that the runtime library (which is written in pure [C](https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter/tree/master/lib)) can be embedded in any application

### Language Bindings

There are currently bindings that allow Tree-sitter to be used from the following languages:

#### Official

* [C#](https://github.com/tree-sitter/csharp-tree-sitter)
* [Go](https://github.com/tree-sitter/go-tree-sitter)
* [Haskell](https://github.com/tree-sitter/haskell-tree-sitter)
* [Java (JDK 22)](https://github.com/tree-sitter/java-tree-sitter)
* [JavaScript (Node.js)](https://github.com/tree-sitter/node-tree-sitter)
* [JavaScript (Wasm)](https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter/tree/master/lib/binding_web)
* [Kotlin](https://github.com/tree-sitter/kotlin-tree-sitter)
* [Python](https://github.com/tree-sitter/py-tree-sitter)
* [Rust](https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter/tree/master/lib/binding_rust)

#### Third-party

* [Delphi](https://github.com/modersohn/delphi-tree-sitter)
* [ELisp](https://github.com/emacs-tree-sitter/elisp-tree-sitter)
* [Go](https://github.com/smacker/go-tree-sitter)
* [Guile](https://github.com/Z572/guile-ts)
* [Java (Android)](https://github.com/AndroidIDEOfficial/android-tree-sitter)
* [Java (JDK 8+)](https://github.com/bonede/tree-sitter-ng)
* [Java (JDK 11+)](https://github.com/seart-group/java-tree-sitter)
* [Julia](https://github.com/MichaelHatherly/TreeSitter.jl)
* [Lua](https://github.com/euclidianAce/ltreesitter)
* [Lua](https://github.com/xcb-xwii/lua-tree-sitter)
* [OCaml](https://github.com/semgrep/ocaml-tree-sitter-core)
* [Odin](https://github.com/laytan/odin-tree-sitter)
* [Perl](https://metacpan.org/pod/Text::Treesitter)
* [R](https://github.com/DavisVaughan/r-tree-sitter)
* [Ruby](https://github.com/Faveod/ruby-tree-sitter)
* [Swift](https://github.com/ChimeHQ/SwiftTreeSitter)

### Parsers

A list of known parsers can be found in the [wiki](https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter/wiki/List-of-parsers).

### Talks on Tree-sitter

* [Strange Loop 2018](https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/tree-sitter---a-new-parsing-system-for-programming-tools.html)
* [FOSDEM 2018](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CGzC_iss-8)
* [GitHub Universe 2017](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1rC79DHpmY)

### Underlying Research

The design of Tree-sitter was greatly influenced by the following research papers:

* [Practical Algorithms for Incremental Software Development Environments](https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1997/CSD-97-946.pdf)
* [Context Aware Scanning for Parsing Extensible Languages](https://www-users.cse.umn.edu/~evw/pubs/vanwyk07gpce/vanwyk07gpce.pdf)
* [Efficient and Flexible Incremental Parsing](https://harmonia.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/twagner-parsing.pdf)
* [Incremental Analysis of Real Programming Languages](https://harmonia.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/twagner-glr.pdf)
* [Error Detection and Recovery in LR Parsers](https://what-when-how.com/compiler-writing/bottom-up-parsing-compiler-writing-part-13)
* [Error Recovery for LR Parsers](https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA043470.pdf)