Mechanism:

There could be a variety of replication algorithms one could provide as a built-in feature of a language. This is not simple as it may seem, because of interaction with other parts of the language. For example, an original object should be locked if instance variables of its replica could be updated and written back afterwards. Instead, meta-objects in reflective languages could be used to implement different replication algorithms transparent to the user program depending on his base-level algorithmic requirements.