From Patterns to Components: The Visitor Library

To what extent can design patterns be turned into reusable, off-the-shelf components, taking advantage of advanced language features? We reviewed the patterns described in the book Design Patterns by Gamma et al. [5], and established a new classification of these patterns by level of “componentizability” (possibility to transform a design pattern into a reusable component) [1]. This article reports on the successful componentization of the Visitor pattern.