gcj/260: "Klass.class" expression should cause Klass to be initialized

[Bryce McKinlay]

The following reply was made to PR gcj/260; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Bryce McKinlay <bryce@albatross.co.nz>
To: Tom Tromey <tromey@cygnus.com>
Cc: java-gnats@sourceware.cygnus.com
Subject: Re: gcj/260: "Klass.class" expression should cause Klass to be 
 initialized
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 15:34:41 +1200

 Tom Tromey wrote:
 
 > Bryce> Using .class syntax should cause the referenced class to
 > Bryce> be initialized.
 >
 > Is this really an active use of the class?  Do you have a reference?
 > I didn't see this in the 1.2 JVM spec.
 
 I didn't find any reference in the spec either (but I didn't look very
 hard). It does say that "certain reflective methods" will cause
 initialization, so I guess ".class" could fall into that category.
 
 I tried the test case on 3 different VMs (1.1.8, 1.2.2, and 1.3), and
 they will all initialize the class just by assigning a java.lang.Class
 variable from a ".class" expression.
 
 It should make things slightly more efficient if we have the compiler
 doing the initialization, since it can remove redundant initialization
 calls within the same method (and we can remove several initialozation
 calls from reflective methods in natClass.cc)
 
 regards
 
   [b ryce ]