Shells: The Green Metaobjects

José de Oliveira Guimarães

A metaobject intercepts the messages sent to an object thus controlling its behavior. Metaobjects are becoming increasing popular although they are not so easy to understand as other constructs and slow in current languages. We present the simple and efficient metaobjects of the object-oriented Green language, called shells. The Green shells use a syntax and semantics similar to subclasses that make them both easy to understand and fast.