Meta operations

Declared members use .. Language-defined meta operations use :: and depend on the receiver’s semantic type.


string text = "Cloth";
println(text::length);
println(text::typeName);

Meta names are case-sensitive and do not follow member visibility rules. They cannot be shadowed, overloaded, or assigned. The receiver is evaluated once and must be non-null.

Queries

Queries are read-only values and do not take parentheses.

Receiver	Query	Result
Array	`::length`	`int32` element count
String	`::length`	`int32` Unicode scalar count
String	`::byteLength`	`int32` UTF-8 byte count
String	`::isEmpty`	`bool`
Managed reference	`::typeName`	`string` runtime type name
Enum or struct	`::typeName`	`string` qualified nominal type name

Classes report qualified source identities. Strings report string; arrays report the erased name array. These names are diagnostic text, not serialization identifiers, memory addresses, or a reflection API.

Narrow a nullable receiver before querying it. Safe meta access is unsupported.

Byte-order operations

Integer and byte-array meta operations take arguments:


byte[] bytes = [0, 0, 0, 0];
int32 value = 42;
value::writeBigEndian(bytes, 0);
int32 restored = bytes::readInt32BigEndian(0);

These are callable operations, unlike the read-only queries above. Binary data lists their names, evaluation order, and range checks.