001/*
002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
003 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
004 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
005 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
006 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
007 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
008 *
009 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
010 *
011 *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
012 *  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
013 *  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
014 *  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
015 *  limitations under the License.
016 *
017 */
018package org.apache.bcel.generic;
019
020/**
021 * Denotes that an instruction may start the process of loading and resolving
022 * the referenced class in the Virtual Machine.
023 *
024 * @version $Id: LoadClass.java 1806200 2017-08-25 16:33:06Z ggregory $
025 */
026public interface LoadClass {
027
028    /**
029     * Returns the ObjectType of the referenced class or interface
030     * that may be loaded and resolved.
031     * @return object type that may be loaded or null if a primitive is
032     * referenced
033     */
034    ObjectType getLoadClassType( ConstantPoolGen cpg );
035
036
037    /**
038     * Returns the type associated with this instruction.
039     * LoadClass instances are always typed, but this type
040     * does not always refer to the type of the class or interface
041     * that it possibly forces to load. For example, GETFIELD would
042     * return the type of the field and not the type of the class
043     * where the field is defined.
044     * If no class is forced to be loaded, <B>null</B> is returned.
045     * An example for this is an ANEWARRAY instruction that creates
046     * an int[][].
047     * @see #getLoadClassType(ConstantPoolGen)
048     */
049    Type getType( ConstantPoolGen cpg );
050}