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 */
017package org.apache.bcel.generic;
018
019/**
020 * Denotes that an instruction may start the process of loading and resolving the referenced class in the Virtual Machine.
021 */
022public interface LoadClass {
023
024    /**
025     * Returns the {@link ObjectType} of the referenced class or interface that may be loaded and resolved.
026     *
027     * @param cpg A ConstantPoolGen
028     * @return object type that may be loaded or null if a primitive is referenced
029     */
030    ObjectType getLoadClassType(ConstantPoolGen cpg);
031
032    /**
033     * Returns the type associated with this instruction. LoadClass instances are always typed, but this type does not always refer to the type of the class or
034     * interface that it possibly forces to load. For example, {@link GETFIELD} would return the type of the field and not the type of the class where the field
035     * is defined. If no class is forced to be loaded, {@code null} is returned. An example for this is an {@link NEWARRAY} instruction that creates an
036     * {@code int[][]}.
037     *
038     * @param cpg A ConstantPoolGen
039     * @return the type associated with this instruction.
040     * @see #getLoadClassType(ConstantPoolGen)
041     */
042    Type getType(ConstantPoolGen cpg);
043}