I've modified the String class to unroll the compareTo and equals methods.
The resulting modifications cause a spec program (_209_db) to fail with
a null pointer exception and a trace that looks bogus. I can see no error
in my changes, and classic does not have this problem.

Note that this version of string has also been modified to store the
hash code along with string.
The bug is seen both with HotSpot 1.0 E and with HotSpot 1.0.1 as of June
9.

Exception trace:
Benchmark _209_db in d:/bgomes/Results/string-uploopunroll4-third.run
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
        at SpecApplicationRunner.benchmarkDone(SpecApplication.java:281)
        at spec.harness.ProgramRunner.runBenchmark(ProgramRunner.java:244)
        at spec.harness.ProgramRunner.run(ProgramRunner.java:206)
        at spec.harness.RunProgram.run(RunProgram.java:60)
        at SpecApplication.runBenchmark(SpecApplication.java:255)
        at SpecApplication.main(SpecApplication.java:171)

Note that this stack trace seems to be bogus - line 281 in SpecApplication.java
has no code. However, there could be some difference between the class files
and the Java files shipped by spec.


The invoking command line, run in the spec directory is
...java -Xbootclasspath/p:d:/altjdk -ms32m -mx32m -Xint SpecApplication -m3 -M3 -a _209_db

The directory d:/altjdk should have the following directory structure
java/lang/String.class.

I've attached my modified version of String.java and the resulting class file.