1. line processor: text lines are surrounded by brackets (textually!) where appropriated (i.e. 2-indents subject to nesting rules). Infix operators aren't touched. Result is stored in an array of CodeFragment, which is basically text + source code location.
2. reader: the forms are "read" and turned into B-expressions. You could call this the parsing stage, but lisp is a bit strange in some sense: there are two levels of parsing: the reader is the first, and the second is in the...
3. interpreter/compiler: every lisp has a starting phase which takes the "low-level" S-expressions comprising the code and parses it into the true semantic expression of the language: e.g. IfExpr, LambdaExpr, FnApplyExpr, etc.
Indeed, I think this is what makes lisp unique: all other languages have parsers which take you directly to step 3. The AST for semantic analysis purposes trees is basically just the parse tree. In lisp, you have to do work to get the AST -- but that's also why you get flexibility in macro writing.
I'd be happy to exchange implementation details. As I mention in the article, my code resides at
