Hello,
I'm still new to lisp(a fascinating and wonderful language) and I
am trying to make my lisp programs write more lisp. I don't mean macros
or such contructs, but actually have lisp rewrite/write functions given
little pieces of code that the engine knows what it does. During a
conversation with a friend(who is a lisp god) on the subject he asked me
to look into reflective languages. Has anyone here had any experience
with such a thing and possibly made lisp be one? I'd be very interested
in the algorithms and philosophy behind it.
-pete
Hi,
You will find a lot of stuff about reflective approach
at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC).
Their WWW address is:
http://www.parc.xerox.com/parc-go.html
One starting point to reflection is
http://www.parc.xerox.com/spl/projects/reflection96/overview.html
It seems that the point is that changing efforts in a reflective
application is minimised and considered during design.
That maximizes code reuse, and allow to bridge the gap between
the application and the required functionality in the shortest
and most elegant way.
Yes, it is highy related to (IMO cool) self-modifying applications.
Metaobject protocol (MOP) can also be interesting for you.
I think other explanations would be helpful and more precise.
Robert