Java class file verification

[Andrew Dinn]

On 14/01/15 23:01, John Bergin wrote:
> To me this means the start_pc value must be the index of an opcode --
> the opcode's starting code-array offset only, and not an interval for
> the size of the opcode.
> 
> But maybe I am interpreting the specification incorrectly.

That's how I read it i.e. a start pc index into the middle of a
multibyte bytecode instruction sequence (i.e. which address a bytecode
operand rather than the bytecode operator itself) is not valid according
to the spec.

Your summary above omits the extra requirement that the end pc index is
likewise constrained modulo the one special case that it can be the
first index beyond the end of the array.

However, I'll note that my experience over the last 6 years with Byteman
is that quite a few classfile transformer programs (both offline and
online) fail to update these indexes when they rewrite bytecode,
frequently leaving indices addressing instructuon operands ... and,
clearly, these programs were not punished for it by the JVM class file
checking routines or else they would have had to correct the omission.
That's been my experience on JDK5/6/7. I have not seen examples when
running on 8 but I don't believe it is any different.

regards,


Andrew Dinn
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