Re: Bytecode Specification

On Sun, Mar 28, 2004 at 07:22:44PM +0100, Thomas Hawtin wrote:
> Jeffrey Sheldon wrote:
> >
> >I was hoping that somebody on this list might be able to point me in a 
> >good direction to find some documentation on working directly with the 
> >Java bytecode.  I am aware of the book The Java Virtual Machine 
> >Specification, and was hoping to find something more recent (ideally a 
> >specification that defines the bytecode for java 1.5).
> 
> JSR202 covers byte code for 1.5, but doesn't appear to have published 
> anything yet, other than referencing JSR139 pre/split verification. I 
> guess you could look at the source code to retroweaver 
> (.sourceforge.net) which is under an Apache-like licence.
> 
> http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=202

One more thing - from empirical observation of classfiles produced by the
1.5 beta javac, there is at least one important change.  Specifically,
ldc instructions can now reference a Constant_Class entry in the constant
pool, as a simpler mechanism for evaluating Foo.class expressions,
where Foo is a class.

The CVS head version of BCEL is able to handle this construct.

-Dave