Abstract

We propose a reflective object-oriented concurrent language RbCl which has no run-time kernel. That is to say, all the behavior of RbCl except for what is restricted by the operating system and hardware can be modified/extended by the user. RbCl runs efficiently in a distributed environment and is intended for practical use. The execution of an RbCl program is performed by a metasystem that consists of metalevel objects. All the features of RbCl including concurrent execution, inter-node communication, and even reflective facilities themselves are realized by the metalevel objects, which are modifiable and extendable. Important metalevel objects are called system objects, that are registered in system object tables. The user can change the behavior of the metasystem by replacing elements of system object tables with user-defined objects. RbCl also provides a novel feature called linguistic symbiosis for metalevel objects. All the metalevel objects in the initial RbCl metasystem are act...

Citations