001/*
002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
003 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
004 * distributed with this work for additional information
005 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
006 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
007 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
008 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
009 *
010 *   https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
011 *
012 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
013 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
014 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
015 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
016 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
017 * under the License.
018 */
019package org.apache.bcel.generic;
020
021/**
022 * Denotes that an instruction may start the process of loading and resolving the referenced class in the Virtual Machine.
023 */
024public interface LoadClass {
025
026    /**
027     * Returns the {@link ObjectType} of the referenced class or interface that may be loaded and resolved.
028     *
029     * @param cpg A ConstantPoolGen
030     * @return object type that may be loaded or null if a primitive is referenced
031     */
032    ObjectType getLoadClassType(ConstantPoolGen cpg);
033
034    /**
035     * 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
036     * 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
037     * 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
038     * {@code int[][]}.
039     *
040     * @param cpg A ConstantPoolGen
041     * @return the type associated with this instruction.
042     * @see #getLoadClassType(ConstantPoolGen)
043     */
044    Type getType(ConstantPoolGen cpg);
045}