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Mirror (programming)
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<h2 id="benefits">Benefits</h2> <p>Decoupling the reflection mechanism from the objects themselves allows for a few benefits: </p> <ul><li>The object's interface is not polluted, so there is no danger of breaking reflection by <a href="/facts/Method_overriding/B1AwBgUF">overriding</a> a reflective method.</li> <li>There can be different mirror systems.</li> <li>The mirror system can be removed entirely (potentially allowing for optimizations).</li> <li>A mirror system can operate on remote code, since it is not coupled with a particular machine.</li></ul> <h2 id="languages-that-use-mirrors">Languages that use mirrors</h2> <ul><li><a href="/facts/Dart_(programming_language)/xJ8tE6Tl">Dart</a>, via its <i>reflect</i> function.</li> <li>Inko,<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:2" href="#fn:2"><sup>2</sup></a> via its <i>std::mirror</i> module.</li> <li><a href="/facts/Rubinius/JHyNjSQg">Rubinius</a> (<a href="/facts/Ruby_(programming_language)/BeYSaPSR">Ruby</a> implementation), via its <i>Rubinius::Mirror.reflect</i> method.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3"><sup>3</sup></a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Scala_(programming_language)/ebL8o6AK">Scala</a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:4" href="#fn:4"><sup>4</sup></a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Swift_(programming_language)/A7qHQC32">Swift</a>, via its <i>reflect</i> function.</li></ul> <h2 id="references">References</h2> <ol> <li id="fn:1"><p>Gilad Bracha and David Ungar, "Meta-level Facilities of Object-Oriented Programming languages" <a href="http://bracha.org/mirrors.pdf" target="_blank">http://bracha.org/mirrors.pdf</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:2"><p>"Frequently Asked Questions". <a href="https://inko-lang.org/faq/#header-does-inko-support-reflection" target="_blank">https://inko-lang.org/faq/#header-does-inko-support-reflection</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:3"><p>"Rubinius/Mirror.rb at master · rubinius/Rubinius". <a href="https://github.com/rubinius/rubinius/blob/master/core/mirror.rb" target="_blank">https://github.com/rubinius/rubinius/blob/master/core/mirror.rb</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:4"><p>"Environment, Universes, and Mirrors". <a href="http://docs.scala-lang.org/overviews/reflection/environment-universes-mirrors.html" target="_blank">http://docs.scala-lang.org/overviews/reflection/environment-universes-mirrors.html</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> </ol>