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European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming

ECOOP 2000: ECOOP 2000 — Object-Oriented Programming pp 313–336Cite as

Load-Time Structural Reflection in Java

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1850))

Abstract

The standard reflection API of Java provides the ability to introspect a program but not to alter program behavior. This paper presents an extension to the reflection API for addressing this limitation. Unlike other extensions enabling behavioral reflection, our extension called Javassist enables structural reflection in Java. For using a standard Java virtual machine (JVM) and avoiding a performance problem, Javassist allows structural reflection only before a class is loaded into the JVM. However, Javassist still covers various applications including a language extension emulating behavioral reflection. This paper also presents the design principles of Javassist, which distinguish Javassist from related work.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Information Science and Electronics, University of Tsukuba and Japan Science and Technology Corp, Japan

    Shigeru Chiba

Authors
  1. Shigeru Chiba
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Informazione, Universita’ di Milano, Via Comelico 39/49, 20135, Milano, Italy

    Elisa Bertino

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© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Chiba, S. (2000). Load-Time Structural Reflection in Java. In: Bertino, E. (eds) ECOOP 2000 — Object-Oriented Programming. ECOOP 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1850. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45102-1_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45102-1_16

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-67660-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45102-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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