Consider this code:

jshell> var layout = MemoryLayout.structLayout(MemoryLayout.paddingLayout(Long.MAX_VALUE - 1), ValueLayout.JAVA_BYTE.withName("x"));
layout ==> [x9223372036854775806b1(x)]

jshell> layout.byteOffset(PathElement.groupElement("x"));
$4 ==> 9223372036854775806

jshell> MethodHandle offHandle = layout.byteOffsetHandle(PathElement.groupElement("x"));
offHandle ==> MethodHandle(long)long

jshell> offHandle.invoke(42);
$7 ==> -9223372036854775768


As can be seen, it is possible to make the method handle returned by "offsetHandle" return a negative value, if the field offset is large and a base offset is provided which make the "add" overflow.

This doesn't happen with other long-based method handles, such as "MemoryLayout::scaleHandle", which correctly throw ArithmeticException in case of overflow.