Reflection and Open Implementations
DCC, University of Chile, Avenida Blanco Encalada 2120, Santiago, Chile, (2009)Abstract
We review the state-of-the-art of reflection and metaprogramming, prior to our work on partial behavioral reflection and Reflex, and open implementations. The first four sections are dedicated to reflection. Section 1 introduces the concept of reflection and its application to programming languages. Section 2 discusses reflection in the particular context of object-oriented programming languages. Then, since we are interested in addressing issues in the concrete applicability of reflection, we dedicate Section 3 to the structuring and engineering of metalevel architectures, while implementation considerations are dealt with in Section 4. After this comprehensive review of reflection, the last section discusses the related area of open implementations (Section 5).