On Thu, 10 May 2001, Dave Thomas wrote:

1.

> Say we had Object#reflection, which returned an object of type
> ObjectReflector. This could provide all the various introspection
> methods in one tidy place
>     ObjectReflector#own_instance_methods
[...]

2.

> Then we could also have Method#reflection -> MethodReflector, which
> could give us
>    MethodReflector#arity
> and so on.
[...]

I think #1 is a quite interesting idea, but the #2 is utterly pointless. 
The reason is that in the #1, reflection has to share its method
namespace with lots more methods in all classes everyone uses everyday,
but in the #2, reflection is pretty much alone: not many people
use (let alone subclass) Method itself, so there is no occasion for
the Method class' namespaces to be cluttered.

> This seems tidier to me, and sets a precedent should we ever allow
> other forms of reflection.

Other forms? Do you have anything in mind?

matju