On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, Steve Downey wrote:
> Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 16:09:01 -0400 > From: Steve Downey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Reply-To: Jakarta Commons Developers List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: Jakarta Commons Developers List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: [clazz] Naming > > On Thursday 31 October 2002 07:37 am, Victor Volle wrote: > > Steve > > > > Steve Downey wrote: > > > Clazz, or whatever, should provide MetaClass facilities. That is, it > > > > should be > > > > > for creating, manipulating, etc Class instances. And, in java, an > > > instance > > > > of > > > > > java.lang.Class is a class. So j.l.Class is a type of MetaClass. > > > > Technically a MetaClass is a Class. But semantically a class whose > > instances are classes is a MetaClass. So it might help to distinguish > > both by using the prefix Meta (as in Smalltalk80) or some other > > naming scheme. > > > Yes, and a natural number N is the class of all classes containing N elements. > What I was trying to get at was that Class and Clazz are both instances of > MetaClass. I think. In fact, if Class wasn't final (and I hate the number of > times I've had to say that with Java), Clazz might even be a subtype of > Class. As it is, a Clazz which describes a particular class (e.g. > org.apache.commons.FooBar) probably has a reference to o.a.c.FooBar's Class > instance. > If java.lang.Class is meta-data (i.e. it describes the characteristics of instances of that class), wouldn't Clazz actually be meta-meta-data? After all, a thing that is called Customer at the Clazz level can be realized as a Java class, or as a portion of an XML dom, or as a row in a JDBC result set. In all three cases, the meta-meta-data would be the same, but the meta-data would be different (a Class versus a DTD/Schema versus the JDBC metadata about that result set). Craig -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:commons-dev-unsubscribe@;jakarta.apache.org> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:commons-dev-help@;jakarta.apache.org>
