    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 $Id$
    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}