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International Symposium on Object Technologies for Advanced Software

ISOTAS 1996: Object Technologies for Advanced Software pp 157–172Cite as

Avoiding confusion in metacircularity: The meta-helix

  • Meta and Reflection
  • Conference paper
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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1049))

Abstract

A system with a metaobject protocol (MOP) allows programmers to extend it and then use the extended system as naturally as the original non-extended one. Such metaobject protocols often use a metacircular architecture to make the extensions easier to write. Unfortunately, this use of metacircularity can lead to problems stemming from a conflation of the extended and non-extended functionalities. We present a new architecture, called the meta-helix, that preserves the advantages of metacircularity but also addresses the problems with conflation.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, USA

    Shigeru Chiba, Gregor Kiczales & John Lamping

Authors
  1. Shigeru Chiba
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  2. Gregor Kiczales
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  3. John Lamping
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Editor information

Kokichi Futatsugi Satoshi Matsuoka

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© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Chiba, S., Kiczales, G., Lamping, J. (1996). Avoiding confusion in metacircularity: The meta-helix. In: Futatsugi, K., Matsuoka, S. (eds) Object Technologies for Advanced Software. ISOTAS 1996. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1049. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60954-7_49

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60954-7_49

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-60954-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49747-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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