In general, I avoid code generation as much as possible, but it is fairly easy in Squeak. The text you see in a browser when you define a new subclass is, in fact, an executable statement that sends a message to a class to create a subclass. IOW:

Set subclass: #Dictionary instanceVariableNames: '' classVariableNames: '' poolDictionaries: '' category: 'Collections-Unordered'

sends a message to Set to create a subclass called Dictionary.

To add methods, you can ask the class to compile a string - basically the same string you see in the browser. Look at Behavior>>compile:notifying: If you dig around Class, Behavior, MetaClass, and similar, you'll find all sorts of nifty meta manipulation goodies for removing methods, fiddling with ivars, etc.

On Jul 30, 2006, at 4:25 PM, Keith R. Fieldhouse wrote:

Hello,

For a project I have in mind, I'd like to do some in-image code generation. I actually do this quite a bit in other languages for one reason and another but it seems as though it'd be a somewhat different beast inside a Squeak image.

So, of the various packages available on SqueakMap/SqueakSource/ Monticello is there one that you'd consider a good example of code generation techniques with Squeak? Or is there something already in the image that's worth looking at? I'm interested in generating new classes and methods on both sides. Something that uses some sort of templating facility would be interesting as well.

Thanks for your help,

Keith

Hi Keith,

the following package on SqueakMap does quite a bit of automatic code generation and transformation. It uses the model of the refactoring browser to compose multiple methods into one and to allow pattern matching on arguments and receiver of the method. Have a look at the source code:

Functional Pattern Matching http://map.squeak.org/package/3772b420-ba02-4fbd-ae30-8eadfc323b7b

Hope this helps, Lukas