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Alt text:A screenshot from the linked article titled "Reflection in C++26", showing reflection as one of the bullet points listed in the "Core Language" section

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[-] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

can someone explain what reflections are, plz?

[-] JakenVeina@lemm.ee 43 points 1 month ago

It's the capability of a program to "reflect" upon itself, I.E. to inspect and understand its own code.

As an example, In C# you can write a class...

public class MyClass
{
    public void MyMethod()
    {
        ...
    }
}

...and you can create an instance of it, and use it, like this...

var myClass = new MyClass();
myClass.MyMethod();

Simple enough, nothing we haven't all seen before.

But you can do the same thing with reflection, as such...

var type = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()
    .GetType("MyClass");

var constructor = type.GetConstructor(Array.Empty<Type>());

var instance = constructor.Invoke(Array.Empty<Object>());

var method = type.GetMethod("MyMethod");

var delegate = method.CreateDelegate(typeof(Action), instance);

delegate.DynamicInvoke(Array.Empty<object>());

Obnoxious and verbose and tossing basically all type safety out the window, but it does enable some pretty crazy interesting things. Like self-discovery and dynamic loading of plugins, or self-configuration of apps. Also often useful when messing with generics. I could dig up some practical use-cases, if you're curious.

[-] GetOffMyLan@programming.dev 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You can also optimize this a bit.

You can use Activator.CreateInstance instead of reflecting and invoking the constructor.

You can also call MethodInfo.Invoke, you don't need to create a delegate.

Also worth noting that Source Generators have replaced the need for reflection in many cases.

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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
122 points (94.2% liked)

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