Meta-Object Protocols for C++: The Iguana Approach

Brendan Gowing and Vinny Cahill (Trinity College).

Meta-Object Protocols (MOPs) are an important aspect of object-oriented reflective programming. A number of C++ extensions have been implemented which include certain reflective features, however none of these provides a fully featured MOP. In this paper, we describe an extended version of C++ called Iguana which allows various features of the C++ language to be reified and their implementations (dynamically) modified. We show how Iguana can be used to write compiled reflective software.

bg@broadcom.ie
vinny.cahill@cs.tcd.ie