Why does Java limit the size of a method to 65535 byte?

java

Solution

See the Java Virtual Machine Specification section 4.10:

4.10 Limitations of the Java Virtual Machine

- The amount of code per non-native, non-abstract method is limited to 65536 bytes by the sizes of the indices in the exception_table of the Code attribute (§4.7.3), in the LineNumberTable attribute (§4.7.8), and in the LocalVariableTable attribute (§4.7.9).

There's few good reasons to have a method that long in an object-oriented programming language.

Problem

I just compiled the following code ``` public class A { public static void main(String... args) { int i = 3; ++i; ++i; ++i; ++i; ++i; ++i; ++i; ++i; // repeat writing the expression ++i for 20,000 times System.out.println(i); } } ``` And got the following error message The code of method main(String...) is exceeding the 65535 bytes limit Why does Java implement this limit? I don't see the rational since Java does include a goto_w instruction.

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