Mirror: Visually reflecting C{sup ++}

Reflection is the ability of a system to inspect and change a model of itself. This ability allows to transparently control and extend the functionality of an existing system without performing any changes to the system itself. In dynamic object-oriented languages like CLOS or Smalltalk. the reflective ability is supported directly by the language. In C++, in contrast, reflection must be provided by some form of code annotation and pre-processing. In most cases, this approach either requires modification of the system code, or just supports the reflection of entire classes but not the reflection of determined objects. This work presents the Mirror environment that supports C++ reflective programming through visual association of meta-classes to classes. It allows full transparent reflection of objects using three-dimensional presentations of the different architecture levels. The environment adds reflective ability to C++ classes without any code modification visible to the user, as well as dynamically selective reflection of objects.