Søren Brandt and René W. Schmidt
Department of Computer Science
University of Aarhus
DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
email: {sbrandt,rws}@cs.au.dk
The meta-level interface is based on a novel language construct, a meta-reference called attribute reference. Attribute references extend the expressive power of the language by allowing the programmer to not only have references to objects, but also to have typed references to instance variables. The meta-level interface provides access to type-information and reifies language primitives, such as object invocation and creation. Efficiency of the meta-level architecture is provided by careful design of the meta-level interface and by runtime code modifications. As an example, is it shown how an interactive programming environment can be constructed in the language itself, on top of the meta-level interface.
Click here to retrieve the whole document in PostScript (12 pages, 123Kb).
BixTex cite:
@InCollection{meta95,
author = "S. Brandt and Ren\'{e} Wenzel Schmidt",
title = "The {D}esign of a {M}etalevel {A}rchitecture for
the {BETA} {L}anguage",
booktitle = "Metaobject Protocols",
publisher = "CRC Press Inc, Boca Raton, Florida",
year = "1996",
month = may,
editor = "Chris Zimmermann"
}