tableswitch

Operation

Access jump table by index and jump

Format

tableswitch
<0-3 byte pad\>
defaultbyte1
defaultbyte2
defaultbyte3
defaultbyte4
lowbyte1
lowbyte2
lowbyte3
lowbyte4
highbyte1
highbyte2
highbyte3
highbyte4
jump offsets...

Forms

tableswitch = 170 (0xaa)

Operand Stack

..., index ...

Description

A tableswitch is a variable-length instruction. Immediately after the tableswitch opcode, between 0 and 3 null bytes (zeroed bytes, not the null object) are inserted as padding. The number of null bytes is chosen so that the following byte begins at an address that is a multiple of 4 bytes from the start of the current method (the opcode of its first instruction). Immediately after the padding follow bytes constituting three signed 32-bit values: default, low, and high. Immediately following those bytes are bytes constituting a series of high - low + 1 signed 32-bit offsets. The value low must be less than or equal to high. The high - low + 1 signed 32-bit offsets are treated as a 0-based jump table. Each of these signed 32-bit values is constructed as (byte1 << 24) | (byte2 << 16) | (byte3 << 8) | byte4.

The index must be of type int and is popped from the operand stack. If index is less than low or index is greater than high, then a target address is calculated by adding default to the address of the opcode of this tableswitch instruction. Otherwise, the offset at position index - low of the jump table is extracted. The target address is calculated by adding that offset to the address of the opcode of this tableswitch instruction. Execution then continues at the target address.

The target address that can be calculated from each jump table offset, as well as the ones that can be calculated from default, must be the address of an opcode of an instruction within the method that contains this tableswitch instruction.

Notes

The alignment required of the 4-byte operands of the tableswitch instruction guarantees 4-byte alignment of those operands if and only if the method that contains the tableswitch starts on a 4-byte boundary.

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The Java^TM Virtual Machine Specification
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