Class (file format)
| Developed by | Sun Microsystems |
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A Java class file is a file (with the .class filename extension) containing Java bytecode that can be executed on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). A Java class file is produced by a Java compiler from Java programming language source files (.java files) containing Java classes. If a source file has more than one class, each class is compiled into a separate class file.
JVMs are available for many platforms, and a class file compiled on one platform will execute on a JVM of another platform. This makes Java applications platform-independent.
On 11 December 2006, the class file format was modified under Java Specification Request (JSR) 202.
There are 10 basic sections to the Java Class File structure:
Class files are identified by the following 4 byte header (in hexadecimal): CA FE BA BE (the first 4 entries in the table below). The history of this magic number was explained by James Gosling referring to a restaurant in Palo Alto:
"We used to go to lunch at a place called St Michael's Alley. According to local legend, in the deep dark past, the Grateful Dead used to perform there before they made it big. It was a pretty funky place that was definitely a Grateful Dead Kinda Place. When Jerry died, they even put up a little Buddhist-esque shrine. When we used to go there, we referred to the place as Cafe Dead. Somewhere along the line it was noticed that this was a HEX number. I was re-vamping some file format code and needed a couple of magic numbers: one for the persistent object file, and one for classes. I used CAFEDEAD for the object file format, and in grepping for 4 character hex words that fit after "CAFE" (it seemed to be a good theme) I hit on BABE and decided to use it. At that time, it didn't seem terribly important or destined to go anywhere but the trash-can of history. So CAFEBABE became the class file format, and CAFEDEAD was the persistent object format. But the persistent object facility went away, and along with it went the use of CAFEDEAD - it was eventually replaced by RMI.
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