OpenJava: A class-based macro system for Java

Abstract

This paper presents OpenJava, which is a macro system that we have developed for Java. With traditional macro systems designed for non object-oriented languages, it is difficult to write a number of macros typical in object-oriented programming since they require the ability to access a logical structure of programs. One of the drawbacks of traditional macro systems is that abstract syntax trees are used for representing source programs. This paper first points out this problem and then shows how OpenJava addresses this problem. A key idea of Open-Java is to use metaobjects, which was originally developed for reflective computing, for representing source programs. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2000.