Xref: utzoo comp.lang.misc:1972 comp.lang.lisp:1149
Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!lfcs!sean
From: sean@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Sean Matthews (AI))
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: reflexivity
Keywords: reflexivity,meta-circularity
Message-ID: <826@etive.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 8 Oct 88 12:34:49 GMT
References: <612@crin.crin.fr>
Sender: news@etive.ed.ac.uk
Reply-To: sean@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Sean Matthews (AI))
Organization: Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U
Lines: 23

In article <612@crin.crin.fr> napoli@crin.crin.fr (Amedeo NAPOLI) writes:
>Does anybody have clear definition of the following terms:
>- meta-circularity
>- reflexivity, self-reflexivity
>for a language ?
>
>Are there good (and easy to read) references on these or related topics ?

reflection is where a programming language has access to its own interpreter,
and can modify it.

see:
B.C.Smith:
Reflection and Semantics in Lisp
Xerox Parc Intelligent Systems Lab. TR ISL-5
also in 1984 proceedings of 11th POPL  (ACM)

Reflection and Semantics in a Procdeural Language
Technical Report, Laboratory of Computer Science, MIT

P.Maes and D.Nardi (editors)
Meta-Level Architectures and Reflection
Elsevier Science Publishers 1988