/*

 * reserved comment block

 * DO NOT REMOVE OR ALTER!

 */

/*

 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more

 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with

 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.

 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0

 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with

 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at

 *

 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

 *

 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software

 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,

 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.

 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and

 * limitations under the License.

 */

package com.sun.org.apache.bcel.internal.generic;

/**

 * Denotes that an instruction may start the process of loading and resolving

 * the referenced class in the Virtual Machine.

 *

 */

public interface LoadClass {

    /**

     * Returns the ObjectType of the referenced class or interface

     * that may be loaded and resolved.

     * @return object type that may be loaded or null if a primitive is

     * referenced

     */

    ObjectType getLoadClassType( ConstantPoolGen cpg );

    /**

     * Returns the type associated with this instruction.

     * LoadClass instances are always typed, but this type

     * does not always refer to the type of the class or interface

     * that it possibly forces to load. For example, GETFIELD would

     * return the type of the field and not the type of the class

     * where the field is defined.

     * If no class is forced to be loaded, <B>null</B> is returned.

     * An example for this is an ANEWARRAY instruction that creates

     * an int[][].

     * @see #getLoadClassType(ConstantPoolGen)

     */

    Type getType( ConstantPoolGen cpg );

}