In releases prior to jdk1.3, long string literals, e.g., >32 or >64 K characters, caused a compiler crash (4056998, 4210937). As of jdk1.3,
the compiler does not crash, but may create an invalid class file, as the
class file format provides only 2 bytes for the length of the UTF-8 encoded
string. The VM then complains when a program containing such a literal
is executed.