Converting UML State Machine to SCL? - uml

I would like to know if I can program a PLC with a state machine/diagram.
With the help of Sparx EA we can compose our state machine. Is there any chance to convert this state machine into SCL(Structured Control Language, used in PLC-Programming)? Or what kind of data can we take from the Sparx EA, that we can use as input for the PLC-Programming?
Or maybe you have a better idea how to realize this idea.

Sure. You need a code generator tool that can read the state machine diagram, and generate equivalent Structured Text.
The shape of the code is pretty straightforward. You can define a ST boolean for each bit (if you can have live parallel states as in StateCharts) or an ST integer containing a state number.
The ST code for each state is then:
if (StateXXX) then
<action in this state>
if (somecondition)
StateXXX=false;
StateYYY=true;
endif
endif
You need to generate this code for each state.
That leaves the question of what tool do you use to accomplish this?
Arguably any tool that can read the UML diagram, which is generally exportable as an XML document from UML editors; with the parsed XML, you can write code to climb over it and spit out the above code fragments.
This is perhaps easier if you code fragments which are well defined templates. You can use ad hoc templates (simply text strings containing markers where something has to be filled in) or you can use a tool that enforces the structure and composition of generated code, such as a Program Transformation System (PTS).
A PTS accepts the grammar for a language, will parse instances of that language, and let you transform that language, finally spitting out the modified language instance. A useful special case is transforming, if you like, the trivial program into a complex, real program. In addition, a good PTS will let you write patterns and transformation rules in terms of formal code templates,that enforce at least the syntax of the template to be valid. This ensures that the pieces you work with always make a certain minimum amount of sense. (In contrast, you can write any garbage you like in a text template). When you write lots of such patterns, this is pretty helpful to avoid producing junk.
For this particular example, for (my company's PTS called DMS, see bio) you can write patterns for the above fragment:
pattern StateInstance(statenumber: natural, action: statements, exit_condition: expression, exit_state: natural): statement =
" if (StateNumber=\statenumber) then
\action
if (\exit_condition) then
StateNumber=\exit_state
endif
endif
";
DMS provides APIs to instantiate this pattern (and others, you typically write many) and compose their results (using instantiated patterns as arguments to other patterns to instantiate) to produce the final program. You can also add transformation rule to optimize the generated code. (DMS is driven by grammar definitions; it already knows 40+ languages and in particular has robust definitions for ST and for XML).

I never really have programmed S7 but basically know what you are looking for. EA does not have a generator for SCL and chances are low to see that coming from Sparx. So there are two possibilities.
First (but not preferred by me) is to delve into the guts of the Sparx macro language which is used during code generation. If you just need minor adaptation for existing templates that's fine, but writing a complete new one is no fun (for me).
The second way is to use the API for code generation. This is fairly easy (well, for me since I studied compiler construction at university). What you would do is to take the state machine, traverse it and spit out the according language constructs. It heavily depends on your skills, but I'd create a rough prototype in a couple of days.
Edit Here is a sample Perl (I know it's a PITA if you don't use it for a week or so, but you can likely decipher it though) script that parses a state machine using EA's API:
package Compiler;
use strict;
use Win32::OLE qw (in);
sub new {
my ($self, $rep) = #_;
$self = {};
$self->{nodes} = {};
$self->{rep} = $rep;
bless $self;
}
sub traverse {
my ($self, $node) = #_;
my $guid = $node->ElementGUID;
return if defined($self->{nodes}->{$guid});
my $nodeInfo = { 'name' => $node->Name, 'type'=> $node->Type, 'out' => ()};
$self->{nodes}->{$guid} = $nodeInfo;
for my $trans (in $node->Connectors) {
my $target = $self->{rep}->GetElementByID($trans->SupplierID);
next if $target->ElementGUID eq $guid;
my #targetInfo = ($trans->TransitionGuard, $target->ElementGUID);
push(#{$nodeInfo->{out}}, \#targetInfo);
$self->traverse($target);
}
}
1;
and a simple main program like this:
use strict;
no strict 'refs';
use compiler;
my $rep = $ENV{'REP'}; # get repository pointer "by magic"
my $node = $rep->GetElementByGUID('{574C5E0C-E032-44c6-A6B0-783D35B9958B}'); # fixed addressing of InitialNode
my $compiler = Compiler->new($rep);
$compiler->traverse($node); # read in all possible transitions/states
my %states = %{$compiler->{nodes}}; # this hash holds all states and their transitions
for my $key (keys %states) {
my $state = $states{$key}; # loop through all found states
print "$state->{type} $state->{name}\n"; # state name
for my $out (#{$state->{out}}) {
my ($guard, $guid) = #{$out};
my $target = $compiler->{nodes}->{$guid};
print "__$guard -> $target->{name}\n";
}
}
Now assume you have a state machine like this:
When you run the above program it will print
StateNode
StateNode
__no condition -> State1
State State1
__condition -> State2
__exit ->
State State2
other condition -> State1
The first StateNode is the unnamed exit and the next the InitialNode (you could also get that info from the API and use it). State1 has two possible transitions (to exit and State2). And State2 only transits to State1.
Now, with the list of named states you can create some enumeration for your different states. Also you have the guards for all transitions which you can transform into if-cascades or switch-statements.
Of course this is not a complete code generator, but you can get the idea how to make one from this scaffold.

If you are using Siemens PLC-s then S7 had optional software package called s7-graph: http://w3.siemens.com/mcms/simatic-controller-software/en/step7/simatic-s7-graph/Pages/Default.aspx. You can implement state machines there. But don't know of any importing options for it.
I used it for some equipment that were controlled as state machines. That software package was not free, i don't remember it's price. I also don't know if all S7 PLC families supported it. I used 400 series and it worked there.
Ask your local Siemens distributor to let you play with it a bit before using it in any project.

i have write a template in EA to realize the code generation PLCopen Code from class diagramms, state machine into ST/SCL code (IEC61131 in Twincat/Codesys).
Class diagramm is used to describe the structure for the programm like FB, DUT.
State machine is used to describe the dynamic process for the plc programm.
So that a whole oop plc programm (with Interface, inherit) will be automatic from UML modell generated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z071cZgMbZ8
Here i have create a new toolbox, which is specific for the modeling for plc programm in EA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfDxkq_hDvw&t=2s

Related

Can a Finite Automata exist without any final state?

It doesn't make sense to construct a language acceptor which does not able to accept any language. I specifically talking about FA which accept languages not transducer or translator which translate languages.
People build them all the time. You have a set of states, and each state is accessible ultimately from every other, and there is no final state, so it never halts, though it might get stuck in a cycling loop. No issue with that at all.
Do a search on "busy beaver".
The mathematical model of a FSM, as described on the wikipedia page, notes that the set F of final states may be empty. While an empty set of final states isn't much use if the FSM is used as a recogniser, FSMs can also be used as transducers.
For example, a Mealy machine doesn't include a set of final states, since it the output from the machine as the input is processed which is of interest.
It is not just that it can exist - it is even necessary: how else would one accept the empty set, which is one of the regular languages. Unless you use an automaton with unaccessible states, which is pretty similar to not having a final state.

Maintaining complex state in Haskell

Suppose you're building a fairly large simulation in Haskell. There are many different types of entities whose attributes update as the simulation progresses. Let's say, for the sake of example, that your entities are called Monkeys, Elephants, Bears, etc..
What is your preferred method for maintaining these entities' states?
The first and most obvious approach I thought of was this:
mainLoop :: [Monkey] -> [Elephant] -> [Bear] -> String
mainLoop monkeys elephants bears =
let monkeys' = updateMonkeys monkeys
elephants' = updateElephants elephants
bears' = updateBears bears
in
if shouldExit monkeys elephants bears then "Done" else
mainLoop monkeys' elephants' bears'
It's already ugly having each type of entity explicitly mentioned in the mainLoop function signature. You can imagine how it would get absolutely awful if you had, say, 20 types of entities. (20 is not unreasonable for complex simulations.) So I think this is an unacceptable approach. But its saving grace is that functions like updateMonkeys are very explicit in what they do: They take a list of Monkeys and return a new one.
So then the next thought would be to roll everything into one big data structure that holds all state, thus cleaning up the signature of mainLoop:
mainLoop :: GameState -> String
mainLoop gs0 =
let gs1 = updateMonkeys gs0
gs2 = updateElephants gs1
gs3 = updateBears gs2
in
if shouldExit gs0 then "Done" else
mainLoop gs3
Some would suggest that we wrap GameState up in a State Monad and call updateMonkeys etc. in a do. That's fine. Some would rather suggest we clean it up with function composition. Also fine, I think. (BTW, I'm a novice with Haskell, so maybe I'm wrong about some of this.)
But then the problem is, functions like updateMonkeys don't give you useful information from their type signature. You can't really be sure what they do. Sure, updateMonkeys is a descriptive name, but that's little consolation. When I pass in a god object and say "please update my global state," I feel like we're back in the imperative world. It feels like global variables by another name: You have a function that does something to the global state, you call it, and you hope for the best. (I suppose you still avoid some concurrency problems that would be present with global variables in an imperative program. But meh, concurrency isn't nearly the only thing wrong with global variables.)
A further problem is this: Suppose the objects need to interact. For example, we have a function like this:
stomp :: Elephant -> Monkey -> (Elephant, Monkey)
stomp elephant monkey =
(elongateEvilGrin elephant, decrementHealth monkey)
Say this gets called in updateElephants, because that's where we check to see if any of the elephants are in stomping range of any monkeys. How do you elegantly propagate the changes to both the monkeys and elephants in this scenario? In our second example, updateElephants takes and returns a god object, so it could effect both changes. But this just muddies the waters further and reinforces my point: With the god object, you're effectively just mutating global variables. And if you're not using the god object, I'm not sure how you'd propagate those types of changes.
What to do? Surely many programs need to manage complex state, so I'm guessing there are some well-known approaches to this problem.
Just for the sake of comparison, here's how I might solve the problem in the OOP world. There would be Monkey, Elephant, etc. objects. I'd probably have class methods to do lookups in the set of all live animals. Maybe you could lookup by location, by ID, whatever. Thanks to the data structures underlying the lookup functions, they'd stay allocated on the heap. (I'm assuming GC or reference counting.) Their member variables would get mutated all the time. Any method of any class would be able to mutate any live animal of any other class. E.g. an Elephant could have a stomp method that would decrement the health of a passed-in Monkey object, and there would be no need to pass that
Likewise, in an Erlang or other actor-oriented design, you could solve these problems fairly elegantly: Each actor maintains its own loop and thus its own state, so you never need a god object. And message passing allows one object's activities to trigger changes in other objects without passing a bunch of stuff all the way back up the call stack. Yet I have heard it said that actors in Haskell are frowned upon.
The answer is functional reactive programming (FRP). It it a hybrid of two coding styles: component state management and time-dependent values. Since FRP is actually a whole family of design patterns, I want to be more specific: I recommend Netwire.
The underlying idea is very simple: You write many small, self-contained components each with their own local state. This is practically equivalent to time-dependent values, because each time you query such a component you may get a different answer and cause a local state update. Then you combine those components to form your actual program.
While this sounds complicated and inefficient it's actually just a very thin layer around regular functions. The design pattern implemented by Netwire is inspired by AFRP (Arrowized Functional Reactive Programming). It's probably different enough to deserve its own name (WFRP?). You may want to read the tutorial.
In any case a small demo follows. Your building blocks are wires:
myWire :: WireP A B
Think of this as a component. It is a time-varying value of type B that depends on a time-varying value of type A, for example a particle in a simulator:
particle :: WireP [Particle] Particle
It depends on a list of particles (for example all currently existing particles) and is itself a particle. Let's use a predefined wire (with a simplified type):
time :: WireP a Time
This is a time-varying value of type Time (= Double). Well, it's time itself (starting at 0 counted from whenever the wire network was started). Since it doesn't depend on another time-varying value you can feed it whatever you want, hence the polymorphic input type. There are also constant wires (time-varying values that don't change over time):
pure 15 :: Wire a Integer
-- or even:
15 :: Wire a Integer
To connect two wires you simply use categorical composition:
integral_ 3 . 15
This gives you a clock at 15x real time speed (the integral of 15 over time) starting at 3 (the integration constant). Thanks to various class instances wires are very handy to combine. You can use your regular operators as well as applicative style or arrow style. Want a clock that starts at 10 and is twice the real time speed?
10 + 2*time
Want a particle that starts and (0, 0) with (0, 0) velocity and accelerates with (2, 1) per second per second?
integral_ (0, 0) . integral_ (0, 0) . pure (2, 1)
Want to display statistics while the user presses the spacebar?
stats . keyDown Spacebar <|> "stats currently disabled"
This is just a small fraction of what Netwire can do for you.
I know this is old topic. But I am facing the same problem right now while trying to implement Rail Fence cipher exercise from exercism.io. It is quite disappointing to see such a common problem having such poor attention in Haskell. I don't take it that to do some as simple as maintaining state I need to learn FRP. So, I continued googling and found solution looking more straightforward - State monad: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Understanding_monads/State

Is it possible, in any language, to implement rules that will affect every instance of an object?

For example, could I implement a rule that would change every string that followed the pattern '1..4' into the array [1,2,3,4]? In JavaScript:
//here you create a rule that changes every string that matches /$([0-9]+)_([0-9]+)*/
//ever created into range($1,$2) (imagine a b are the results of the regexp)
var a = '1..4';
console.log(a);
>> output: [1,2,3,4];
Of course, I'm pretty confident that would be impossible in most languages. My question is: is there any language in which that would be possible? Or have anyone ever proposed something like that? Does this thing have a 'name' for which I can google to read more about?
Modifying the language from whithin itself falls under the umbrell of reflection and metaprogramming. It is referred as behavioral reflection. It differs from structural reflection that opperates at the level of the application (e.g. classes, methods) and not the language level. Support for behavioral reflection varies greatly across languages.
We can broadly categorize language changes in two categories:
changes that modify the semantics (i.e. the rules) of the language itself (e.g. redefine the method lookup algorithm),
changes that modify the syntax (e.g. your syntax '1..4' to create arrays).
For case 1, certain languages expose the structure of the application (structural reflection) and the inner working of their implementation (behavioral reflection) to the application itself via special object, called meta-objects. Meta-objects are reifications of otherwise implicit aspects, that become then explicitely manipulable: the application can modify the meta-objects to redefine part of its structure, or part of the language. When it comes to langauge changes, the focus is usually on modifiying message sending / method invocation since it is the core mechanism of object-oriented language. But the same idea could be applied to expose other aspects of the language, e.g. field accesses, synchronization primitives, foreach enumeration, etc. depending on the language.
For case 2, the program must be representated in a suitable data structure to be modified. For languages of the lisp family, the program manipulates lists, and the program can be itself represented as lists. This is called homoiconicity and is handy for metaprogramming, hence the flexibility of lisp-like languages. For other languages, their representation is usually an AST. Transforming the representation of the program, or rewriting it, is possible with macro, preprocessors, or hooks during compilation or class loading.
The line between 1 and 2 is however blurry. Syntactical changes can appear to modify the semantics of the language. For instance, I can rewrite all fields accesses with proper getter and setter and perform additional logic there, say to implement transactional memory. Did I perform a semantical change of what a field access is, or merely a syntax change?
Also, there are other constructs the fall bewten the lines. For instance, proxies and #doesNotUnderstand trap are popular techniques to simulate the reification of message sends to some extent.
Lisp and Smalltalk have been very influencial in the field of metaprogramming, and I think the two following projects/platform are interesting to look at for a representative of each of these:
Racket, a lisp-like language focused on growing languages from within the langauge
Helvetia, a Smalltalk extension to embed new languages into the host language by leveraging the AST of the host environment.
I hope you enjoyed this even if I did not really address your question ;)
Your desired change require modifying the way literals are created. This is AFAIK not usually exposed to the application. The closed work that I can think of is Virtual Values for Language Extension, that tackled Javascript.
Yes. Common Lisp (and certain other lisps) have "reader macros" which allow the user to reprogram (incrementally) the mapping between the input stream and the actual language construct as parsed.
See http://dorophone.blogspot.com/2008/03/common-lisp-reader-macros-simple.html
If you want to operate on the level of objects, you will want to use a debugging/memory management framework that keeps track of all objects, and processes the rules on each evaluation step (nasty). This seems like the kind of thing you might be able to shoehorn into smalltalk.
CLOS (Common Lisp Object System) allows redefinition of live objects.
Ultimately you need two things to implement this:
Access to the running system's AST (Abstract Syntax Tree), and
Access to the running system's objects.
You'll want to study meta-object protocols and the languages that use them, then the implementations of both the MOPs and the environment within which these programs are executed.
Image-based systems will be the easiest to modify (e.g., Lisp, potentially Smalltalk).
(Image-based systems store a snapshot of a running system, allowing complete shutdown and restarts, redefinitions, etc. of a complete environment, including existing objects, and their definitions.)
Ruby allows you to extend classes. For instance, this example adds functionality to the String class. But you can do more than add methods to classes. You can also overwrite methods, but defining a method that's already been defined. You may want to preserve access to the original method using alias_method.
Putting all this together, you can overload a constructor in Ruby, but in your case, there's a catch: It sounds like you want the constructor to return a different type. Constructors by definition return instances of their class. If you just want it to return the string "[1,2,3,4]", that's simple enough:
class string
alias_method :initialize :old_constructor
def initialize
old_constructor
# code that applies your transformation
end
end
But there's no way to make it return an Array if that's what you want.

Keeping State in a Purely Functional Language

I am trying to figure out how to do the following, assume that your are working on a controller for a DC motor you want to keep it spinning at a certain speed set by the user,
(def set-point (ref {:sp 90}))
(while true
(let [curr (read-speed)]
(controller #set-point curr)))
Now that set-point can change any time via a web a application, I can't think of a way to do this without using ref, so my question is how functional languages deal with this sort of thing? (even though the example is in clojure I am interested in the general idea.)
This will not answer your question but I want to show how these things are done in Clojure. It might help someone reading this later so they don't think they have to read up on monads, reactive programming or other "complicated" subjects to use Clojure.
Clojure is not a purely functional language and in this case it might be a good idea to leave the pure functions aside for a moment and model the inherent state of the system with identities.
In Clojure, you would probably use one of the reference types. There are several to choose from and knowing which one to use might be difficult. The good news is they all support the unified update model so changing the reference type later should be pretty straight forward.
I've chosen an atom but depending on your requirements it might be more appropriate to use a ref or an agent.
The motor is an identity in your program. It is a "label" for some thing that has different values at different times and these values are related to each other (i.e., the speed of the motor). I have put a :validator on the atom to ensure that the speed never drops below zero.
(def motor (atom {:speed 0} :validator (comp not neg? :speed)))
(defn add-speed [n]
(swap! motor update-in [:speed] + n))
(defn set-speed [n]
(swap! motor update-in [:speed] (constantly n)))
> (add-speed 10)
> (add-speed -8)
> (add-speed -4) ;; This will not change the state of motor
;; since the speed would drop below zero and
;; the validator does not allow that!
> (:speed #motor)
2
> (set-speed 12)
> (:speed #motor)
12
If you want to change the semantics of the motor identity you have at least two other reference types to choose from.
If you want to change the speed of the motor asynchronously you would use an agent. Then you need to change swap! with send. This would be useful if, for example, the clients adjusting the motor speed are different from the clients using the motor speed, so that it's fine for the speed to be changed "eventually".
Another option is to use a ref which would be appropriate if the motor need to coordinate with other identities in your system. If you choose this reference type you change swap! with alter. In addition, all state changes are run in a transaction with dosync to ensure that all identities in the transaction are updated atomically.
Monads are not needed to model identities and state in Clojure!
For this answer, I'm going to interpret "a purely functional language" as meaning "an ML-style language that excludes side effects" which I will interpret in turn as meaning "Haskell" which I'll interpret as meaning "GHC". None of these are strictly true, but given that you're contrasting this with a Lisp derivative and that GHC is rather prominent, I'm guessing this will still get at the heart of your question.
As always, the answer in Haskell is a bit of sleight-of-hand where access to mutable data (or anything with side effects) is structured in such a way that the type system guarantees that it will "look" pure from the inside, while producing a final program that has side effects where expected. The usual business with monads is a large part of this, but the details don't really matter and mostly distract from the issue. In practice, it just means you have to be explicit about where side effects can occur and in what order, and you're not allowed to "cheat".
Mutability primitives are generally provided by the language runtime, and accessed through functions that produce values in some monad also provided by the runtime (often IO, sometimes more specialized ones). First, let's take a look at the Clojure example you provided: it uses ref, which is described in the documentation here:
While Vars ensure safe use of mutable storage locations via thread isolation, transactional references (Refs) ensure safe shared use of mutable storage locations via a software transactional memory (STM) system. Refs are bound to a single storage location for their lifetime, and only allow mutation of that location to occur within a transaction.
Amusingly, that whole paragraph translates pretty directly to GHC Haskell. I'm guessing that "Vars" are equivalent to Haskell's MVar, while "Refs" are almost certainly equivalent to TVar as found in the stm package.
So to translate the example to Haskell, we'll need a function that creates the TVar:
setPoint :: STM (TVar Int)
setPoint = newTVar 90
...and we can use it in code like this:
updateLoop :: IO ()
updateLoop = do tvSetPoint <- atomically setPoint
sequence_ . repeat $ update tvSetPoint
where update tv = do curSpeed <- readSpeed
curSet <- atomically $ readTVar tv
controller curSet curSpeed
In actual use my code would be far more terse than that, but I've left things more verbose here in hopes of being less cryptic.
I suppose one could object that this code isn't pure and is using mutable state, but... so what? At some point a program is going to run and we'd like it to do input and output. The important thing is that we retain all the benefits of code being pure, even when using it to write code with mutable state. For instance, I've implemented an infinite loop of side effects using the repeat function; but repeat is still pure and behaves reliably and nothing I can do with it will change that.
A technique to tackle problems that apparently scream for mutability (like GUI or web applications) in a functional way is Functional Reactive Programming.
The pattern you need for this is called Monads. If you really want to get into functional programming you should try to understand what monads are used for and what they can do. As a starting point I would suggest this link.
As a short informal explanation for monads:
Monads can be seen as data + context that is passed around in your program. This is the "space suit" often used in explanations. You pass data and context around together and insert any operation into this Monad. There is usually no way to get the data back once it is inserted into the context, you just can go the other way round inserting operations, so that they handle data combined with context. This way it almost seems as if you get the data out, but if you look closely you never do.
Depending on your application the context can be almost anything. A datastructure that combines multiple entities, exceptions, optionals, or the real world (i/o-monads). In the paper linked above the context will be execution states of an algorithm, so this is quite similar to the things you have in mind.
In Erlang you could use a process to hold the value. Something like this:
holdVar(SomeVar) ->
receive %% wait for message
{From, get} -> %% if you receive a get
From ! {value, SomeVar}, %% respond with SomeVar
holdVar(SomeVar); %% recursively call holdVar
%% to start listening again
{From, {set, SomeNewVar}} -> %% if you receive a set
From ! {ok}, %% respond with ok
holdVar(SomeNewVar); %% recursively call holdVar with
%% the SomeNewVar that you received
%% in the message
end.

What programming languages will let me manipulate the sequence of instructions in a method?

I have an upcoming project in which a core requirement will be to mutate the way a method works at runtime. Note that I'm not talking about a higher level OO concept like "shadow one method with another", although the practical effect would be similar.
The key properties I'm after are:
I must be able to modify the method in such a way that I can add new expressions, remove existing expressions, or modify any of the expressions that take place in it.
After modifying the method, subsequent calls to that method would invoke the new sequence of operations. (Or, if the language binds methods rather than evaluating every single time, provide me a way to unbind/rebind the new method.)
Ideally, I would like to manipulate the atomic units of the language (e.g., "invoke method foo on object bar") and not the assembly directly (e.g. "pop these three parameters onto the stack"). In other words, I'd like to be able to have high confidence that the operations I construct are semantically meaningful in the language. But I'll take what I can get.
If you're not sure if a candidate language meets these criteria, here's a simple litmus test:
Can you write another method called clean which:
accepts a method m as input
returns another method m2 that performs the same operations as m
such that m2 is identical to m, but doesn't contain any calls to the print-to-standard-out method in your language (puts, System.Console.WriteLn, println, etc.)?
I'd like to do some preliminary research now and figure out what the strongest candidates are. Having a large, active community is as important to me as the practicality of implementing what I want to do. I am aware that there may be some unforged territory here, since manipulating bytecode directly is not typically an operation that needs to be exposed.
What are the choices available to me? If possible, can you provide a toy example in one or more of the languages that you recommend, or point me to a recent example?
Update: The reason I'm after this is that I'd like to write a program which is capable of modifying itself at runtime in response to new information. This modification goes beyond mere parameters or configurable data, but full-fledged, evolved changes in behavior. (No, I'm not writing a virus. ;) )
Well, you could always use .NET and the Expression libraries to build up expressions. That I think is really your best bet as you can build up representations of commands in memory and there is good library support for manipulating, traversing, etc.
Well, those languages with really strong macro support (in particular Lisps) could qualify.
But are you sure you actually need to go this deeply? I don't know what you're trying to do, but I suppose you could emulate it without actually getting too deeply into metaprogramming. Say, instead of using a method and manipulating it, use a collection of functions (with some way of sharing state, e.g. an object holding state passed to each).
I would say Groovy can do this.
For example
class Foo {
void bar() {
println "foobar"
}
}
Foo.metaClass.bar = {->
prinltn "barfoo"
}
Or a specific instance of foo without effecting other instances
fooInstance.metaClass.bar = {->
println "instance barfoo"
}
Using this approach I can modify, remove or add expression from the method and Subsequent calls will use the new method. You can do quite a lot with the Groovy metaClass.
In java, many professional framework do so using the open source ASM framework.
Here is a list of all famous java apps and libs including ASM.
A few years ago BCEL was also very much used.
There are languages/environments that allows a real runtime modification - for example, Common Lisp, Smalltalk, Forth. Use one of them if you really know what you're doing. Otherwise you can simply employ an interpreter pattern for an evolving part of your code, it is possible (and trivial) with any OO or functional language.

Resources