[a]c#: c# with a Customizable Code Annotation Mechanism

Reflective programming is becoming popular due to the increasing set of dynamic services provided by execution environments like JVM and CLR. With custom attributes Microsoft introduced an extensible model of reflection for CLR: they can be used as additional decorations on element declarations. The same notion has been introduced in Java 1.5. The extensible model proposed in both platforms limits annotations to class members. In this paper we describe [a]C#, 1 an extension of the C# programming language, that allows programmers to annotate statements or code blocks and retrieve these annotations at run-time. We show how this extension can be reduced to the existing model. A set of operations on annotated code blocks to retrieve annotations and manipulate bytecode is introduced. Finally, we discuss how to use [a]C# to annotate programs giving hints on how to parallel a sequential method and how it can be implemented by means of the abstractions provided by the run-time of the language. Copyright 2005 ACM.