A system for reflection in C++
Abstract
Object-oriented programming languages such as Java and Objective C have become popular for implementing agent-based and other object-based simulations since objects in those languages can {\em reflect} (i.e. make runtime queries of an object's structure). This allows, for example, a fairly trivial {\em serialisation} routine (conversion of an object into a binary representation that can be stored or passed over a network) to be written. However C++ does not offer this ability, as type information is thrown away at compile time. Yet C++ is often a preferred development environment, whether for performance reasons or for its expressive features such as operator overloading. In this paper, we present the {\em Classdesc} system which brings many of the benefits of object reflection to C++.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cs/0401024,
title = {A system for reflection in C++},
author = {Duraid Madina and Russell K. Standish},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cs/0401024},
year = {2007}
}