The Art of the Metaobject Protocol

Front Cover
MIT Press, Jul 30, 1991 - Computers - 352 pages
The authors introduce this new approach to programming language design, describe its evolution and design principles, and present a formal specification of a metaobject protocol for CLOS.

The CLOS metaobject protocol is an elegant, high-performance extension to the CommonLisp Object System. The authors, who developed the metaobject protocol and who were among the group that developed CLOS, introduce this new approach to programming language design, describe its evolution and design principles, and present a formal specification of a metaobject protocol for CLOS.

Kiczales, des Rivières, and Bobrow show that the "art of metaobject protocol design" lies in creating a synthetic combination of object-oriented and reflective techniques that can be applied under existing software engineering considerations to yield a new approach to programming language design that meets a broad set of design criteria.

One of the major benefits of including the metaobject protocol in programming languages is that it allows users to adjust the language to better suit their needs. Metaobject protocols also disprove the adage that adding more flexibility to a programming language reduces its performance. In presenting the principles of metaobject protocols, the authors work with actual code for a simplified implementation of CLOS and its metaobject protocol, providing an opportunity for the reader to gain hands-on experience with the design process. They also include a number of exercises that address important concerns and open issues.

Gregor Kiczales and Jim des Rivières, are Members of the Research Staff, and Daniel Bobrow is a Research Fellow, in the System Sciences Laboratory at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.

 

Contents

How CLOS is Implemented
13
Introspection and Analysis
47
Extending the Language
71
Protocol Design
107
Concepts
137
Generic Functions and Methods
163
A Introduction to CLOS
243
Living with Circularity
269
E Cross Reference to Full MOP
319
Copyright

Other editions - View all

The Art of the Metaobject Protocol
Gregor Kiczales,Jim Des Rivieres,Daniel G. Bobrow
No preview available - 1991
The Art of the Metaobject Protocol
Gregor Kiczales,Jim Des Rivieres,Daniel G. Bobrow
No preview available - 1991

Common terms and phrases

&key &rest initargs accessor allocate-instance allocation apply apply-generic-function apply-method behavior is specified call-next-method canonicalized class argument class metaobject class class precedence list class standard-class class-name class-of class-precedence-list clearp Closette color-mixin color-rectangle Common Lisp compute compute-discriminating-function compute-slots default initialization arguments defclass form defgeneric defined defmethod defun setf direct slot definition direct-slots direct-superclasses dolist effective slot definition ensure-class error is signaled example finalize-inheritance find-class full CLOS full MOP funcall funcallable-standard-class function is called function metaobject Function Returns function-name generic-function gf methods implementation inheritance initform initfunction initialize-instance instance slot-name keyword argument lambda lambda-list language macro make-instance mapcar memoized metaclass metaobject protocol method function method lookup method metaobject multiple inheritance new-value next-methods null object object argument object-oriented overridden plist Portable programs Primary Method rectangle reinitialization setf slot-value shared-initialize slot access slot definition metaobject slot name slot option slot specification slot-definition-name slot-value-using-class Smalltalk standard method standard-generic-function standard-object subclass superclasses SYNTAX

About the author (1991)

Gregor Kiczales is a Member of the Research Staff in the System Sciences Laboratory at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.

Jim des Rivières is a Member of the Research Staff in the System Sciences Laboratory at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.

Daniel G. Bobrow is a Research Fellow in the Intelligent Systems Laboratory, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence, and Chair of the Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society.

Bibliographic information

TitleThe Art of the Metaobject Protocol
Mit Press
AuthorsGregor Kiczales, Jim Des Rivieres, Daniel G. Bobrow
Editionillustrated
PublisherMIT Press, 1991
ISBN0262610744, 9780262610742
Length352 pages
Subjects › 

Computers / Computer Science
  
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