Re: java disassembler/assembler

[Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>]

Daniel Reynaud wrote:
> > It would be nice to have an option to print methods, classesm
> > and signatures in external (Java) syntax, rather than as signatures
>
> ok, I added that to my to-do list. What about the <clinit> method ?

Sun's javap prints:

static {};

> the disassembler prints the constant pool as Jasmin comments. It also 
> prints the constant pool indexes as Jasmin comments and also "tries" to 
> fetch their actual value in the constant pool.
>
> You can have a look at the attached test.j file, it has been produced by 
> the disassembler with the following command :
> dejasmin --warmode --printoffsets --nolabels test.class > test.j

Well, printing everything twice is not a good interface.
Instead of:

;                2: invokespecial 1 (java/lang/Object/<init> ()V)

and then later:

        invokespecial java/lang/Object/<init>()V

it is better to just print the instructions once:

  2: invokespecial #1=java/lang/Object/<init>()V

The assembler could just ignore the "#NNN=" prefix.   It would
be nice to have an option where the the assembler would try to
use constant pool entry NNN if it is unused or matches the request,
or pick a different or new entry otherwise (and printing a warning).
But I don't that's a critical feature.

Note also you only want to print the constant pool and the constant
pool indexes, in a "verbose" mode - probably not by default.
--
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/