Name: el35337 Date: 05/12/98


Problem: If a class A refers to a class B,
and if B is not in classpath, then I can
still load class A by Class.forName call
(should it work???) and then if I call
getDeclaredMethods() on class A then the call
returns NULL. From the docs, I suppose it
should either throw an exception or return
an array of Method[] of length 0. The strange
thing is that the getMethods() call on class
A returns an array of finite length.

1) Should the class A be loaded at all if
it refers to B and B is not in classpath?
2) Shouldn't getDeclaredMethods() call throw
an exception if class A is loaded at all
and B is not in classpath?
3) In any case shouldn't getMethods and
getDeclaredMethods return similar results (I
mean either throw an exception or return a
non-NULL array)?

Sample Code

I have a class aaaa which refers to bbbb.
Compile both and then remove bbbb from
class path. Run "java aaaa".

aaaa.java
===========
import java.lang.*;
import java.lang.reflect.*;
import bbbb;

public class aaaa extends Object{

  public void xyz() {

  }

  public bbbb zzz () {
    return null;
  }

  public static void main (String [] args) {

    try {
      Class c = Class.forName ("aaaa");
      Method [] mm = c.getDeclaredMethods();

      System.out.println ("c is : " + c);
      if (mm == null)
          System.out.println ("mm is null");
      else
          System.out.println (mm + " " + mm.length);
    }
    catch (Exception e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
  }
}

bbbb.java
=========
import java.lang.*;

public class bbbb extends Object {

  public void xyz() {

  }

}

- ajay apte
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(Review ID: 30106)
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