[Aldor-l] [Axiom-developer] Re: exports and constants

[Christian Aistleitner]

Hello,

> Christian, I think that you should have said that reflection would be
> just perfect for your AldorUnit
>
> http://www.risc.uni-linz.ac.at/software/aldor/aldorunit

You are right, reflection would be wonderfull for AldorUnit. However,  
that's not all I have int mind for reflection.
For example, I wrote wrappers for Maple syntax and Mathematica's FullForm  
syntax.
My further code needs to determine at runtime, which syntax wrappers are  
available. Therefore, the syntax wrappers have to register themselves in a  
central repository. But this is a pain. With reflection, we could do  
without such a repository.

For serialzation, a reflection framework proves handy sometimes.

There are lots of further examples :)

> I am somehow reluctant to allow reflections in general, but for certain
> types of problems (like AldorUnit) it would be quite advantagous. OR the
> Aldor compiler would support AldorUnit and several other tools (relying
> on reflections) that people come up with in the future, then reflections
> are not so important in my eyes.

I agree that everything giving more reflection to Aldor is a step in the  
right direction. But I'd prefer to go for the full monty.

--
Kind regards,
Christian