CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2012/1w41 as

Introduction

In this page, the concept of meta-programming is discussed. We first give the definition of meta-programming, along with a brief description. Next, we give an overview of the concept of meta-program in general i.e., its evolution and implementation in various languages is discussed. We then focus on the languages in which Meta -programming is prevalent namely Ruby, Java, C, C++ and Python. We then follow it up with the advantages and disadvantages of the same before concluding.

Definition

Meta-programming is the discipline of writing programs that represent and manipulate other programs or themselves. An established example of meta-program is a compiler. We can also define a meta-program as a program which generates code and writing such programs is called meta-programming. This allows programmers to get more work done in the same amount of time as they would take to write all the code manually, or it gives programs greater flexibility to efficiently handle new situations without recompilation. The ability of a programming language to be its own meta-language is called reflection or reflexivity. This reflection ability is a feature that is very valuable to facilitate meta-programming.