RE: proposal to post deprecation notice on BCEL webpage

Several people have asked what situations BCEL is better to use than ASM. Here are my thoughts:

BCEL is preferred over ASM when:
+    direct access to the constant pool of a class is desired - for constant pool optimizations, for example
          -    ASM's API completely hides the constant pool;
          -    BCEL's API provides full access to the constant pool.
+    an /easy-to-use/ DOM-style API is desired (especially when a class needs to be /modified/ - not merely read)
          -    ASM's API does have a DOM-style sub-API.
               However, from reading the API documentation (not from personal experience),
               I judge the API to be difficult to use when /modifying/ class files.

- David