The term "meta-circular" describes a language characteristic that enables meta-programming. It means that the mechanisms needed to define the semantics of a language are available to programmers _in_ the language itself. This leads to support for internal Domain Specific Languages and other higher-order techniques. In a recent interview, John McCarthy said that is was important for a language to have access to it's own parse-tree. I consider that a weak form of meta-circularity, but the right intent is communicated.
On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 12:24 AM, Russ Abbott <[email protected]> wrote: > WRT the original quest, I realize that the trail is probably cold for most > of the list by now and that tangential discussions have now generated more > interest, but I think I have a reasonable answer. > > In functional programming map and reduce are often called *meta-functions*. > GA, GP, Ant Colony Optimization, etc. are often called *meta-heuristics*. > *Meta programming* is even in Wikipedia referring to programs that > manipulate other programs. *Meta-programming* is a bit too general for > what I'm after since a compiler is a meta-program and that's not really the > point. But *meta-application* may do the trick. > > Thanks for all your help. > > -- Russ >
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