Patent ID: 7698697

Claim:
A method of processing code that uses glacial constants, comprising: providing, for a first code component that uses a glacial constant, two code components as replacements for the first code component, wherein: the first code component is written in a particular programming language; the two code components comprise a base code component wherein the glacial constant is used as a constant value and an overriding code component wherein the glacial constant is used as a variable value, the overriding code component overriding at least a portion of code in the base code component; and the base code component and the overriding code component are written in the particular programming language; executing the base code component as the replacement for the first code component provided that the overriding code component has not yet been dynamically loaded, causing the glacial constant to be used as the constant value; dynamically loading the overriding code component to replace the base code component upon programmatically detecting that a value other than the constant value is needed for the glacial constant; and subsequent to the dynamic loading, executing the overriding code component as the replacement for the first code component instead of the base code component, causing the glacial constant to be used thereafter as the variable value.