A system for reflection in C++
<|reference_start|>A system for reflection in C++: Object-oriented programming languages such as Java and Objective C have become popular for implementing agent-based and other object-based simulations since objects in those languages can {\em reflect} (i.e. make runtime queries of an object's structure). This allows, for example, a fairly trivial {\em serialisation} routine (conversion of an object into a binary representation that can be stored or passed over a network) to be written. However C++ does not offer this ability, as type information is thrown away at compile time. Yet C++ is often a preferred development environment, whether for performance reasons or for its expressive features such as operator overloading.   In this paper, we present the {\em Classdesc} system which brings many of the benefits of object reflection to C++.<|reference_end|>
@article{madina2004a,
    title={A system for reflection in C++},
    author={Duraid Madina and Russell K. Standish},
    journal={Proceedings AUUG 2001: Always on and Everywhere, 207. ISBN
  0957753225},
    year={2004},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={cs/0401024},
    primaryClass={cs.PL}
}