was: Re: looking for MOP documentation

[Peter Hansen]

Paul Foley wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 07:33:42 -0400, Peter Hansen wrote:
> 
> > Ng Pheng Siong wrote:
> >>
> >> According to Peter Hansen  <peter at engcorp.com>:
> >> > kasper graversen wrote:
> >> > > On Fri, 12 Sep 2003 14:36:44 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
> >> > > >> Erm, what's "MOP" mean?
> >> > > what has all this talk to do with documentation of the MOP???
> >> > Er, if you'll look back, you'll see that Anthony asked what MOP
> >> > meant
> >>
> >> Meta Object Protocol.
> 
> > Thanks, but one might say that this is what it spells, not what it _means_.
> 
> Read the introduction to _The Art of the Metaobject Protocol_, at
> http://www2.parc.com/csl/groups/sda/publications/papers/Kiczales-AMOP/

Thanks Paul.

If that description is taken as authoritative about "the MOP", then it 
seems to me after a first reading that Python *has no MOP*, and probably
will not, given Guido's approach to language design.  

Am I correct?  Or does the term really have a broader meaning than what
I get out of that page, and Python in fact has aspects that could be called
its meta-object protocol?

Key phrase: "Metaobject protocols are interfaces to the language that give 
users the ability to incrementally modify the language's behavior and 
implementation...".  Near as I can tell, part of the whole character of Python
is that a user *cannot* do either of those things.

-Peter