Classes and Metaclass

Smalltalk/X provides a Class and Metaclass hierarchy comparable to other smalltalk implementations. This means, that all the meta knowledge is available at runtime. New classes can be created, methods be defined or removed etc.
This functionality is provided both for machine-compiled and for interpreted bytecode classes/methods.

The most interesting classes are:

Behavior - defines common behavior of all classes
Class - adds symbolic information and compilation facilities
Metaclass - defines protocol for class-classes

Most programmers never manipulate the class hierarchy programmatically; changes are typically made with the browser or by loading classes from either source files or binary compiled code files.

Use the systemBrowser to have a more detailed look into the implementation.

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Doc $Revision: 1.16 $ $Date: 2003/01/28 15:44:18 $