Abstract
Many object-oriented languages support some kind of runtime introspection that allows programmers to navigate through meta-data describing the available classes, their attributes and methods. In general, the meta-data can be used to instantiate new objects, manipulate their attributes and call their methods. The meta-programming enabled by this kind of reflection has proven itself useful in a variety of applications such as object-relational mappings and inversion-of-control containers and test automation
Motivated by the need of programmatic support for composition and configuration of software components at runtime, in this work we show how to implement a runtime reflection support for C++11, using the available runtime type information, template metaprogramming and source code analysis. We will show the capabilities of the reflection API and the memory footprint for different kinds of meta-data. The API relies on a few features introduced by C++11, the new ISO standard for C++. Our reflection system is not invasive as it requires no modifications whatsoever of the application code.
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de Bayser, M., Cerqueira, R. (2012). A System for Runtime Type Introspection in C++. In: de Carvalho Junior, F.H., Barbosa, L.S. (eds) Programming Languages. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7554. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33182-4_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33182-4_9
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