2007/5/22, tim Rowledge tim@rowledge.org:
On 22-May-07, at 7:23 AM, Damien Cassou wrote:
Much clearer :-) However, when methods access a non existing instance variable, I think it should not crash the VM with a segfault.
Lovely idea. But.... Building bytecodes is just like using assembler; you can corrupt anything. Normally the compiler generates the correct, safe, code but if you're using some other tool that can be persuaded to pop the stack and save to x'th instance var ofan object that has only x-1, then you're in trouble because you've almost certainly stomped on the header of the next object in memory. Sure, we could make the basic routines check the bounds every time. Care to imagine the performance impact?
Java doesn't run exactly slow.
Cheers Philippe
tim
tim Rowledge; tim@rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim Ornerythologists study bad tempered birds