Maximum size of a method in Java 7 and 8
java, java-7, java-8
Solution
According to JVMS7 :
The fact that end_pc is exclusive is a historical mistake in the design of the Java virtual machine: if the Java virtual machine code for a method is exactly 65535 bytes long and ends with an instruction that is 1 byte long, then that instruction cannot be protected by an exception handler. A compiler writer can work around this bug by limiting the maximum size of the generated Java virtual machine code for any method, instance initialization method, or static initializer (the size of any code array) to 65534 bytes.
But this is about `Java 7`. There is no final specs for Java 8, so nobody (except its developers) could answer this question.
UPD (2015-04-06) According to JVM8 it is also true for `Java 8`.
Problem
I know that a method cannot be larger than 64 KB with Java. The limitation causes us problems with generated code from a JavaCC grammar. We had problems with Java 6 and were able to fix this by changing the grammar. Has the limit been changed for Java 7 or is it planned for Java 8? Just to make it clear. I don't need a method larger than 64 KB by myself. But I wrote a grammar which compiles to a very large method.