Checking Access to Protected Members in the Java Virtual Machine

Abstract

The “protected” keyword is a Java visibility construct that many use, but few deeply understand, given that some Java VMs incorrectly realise it. This paper studies in detail how to correctly and efficiently check access to protected members in the Java Virtual Machine. It also presents some corpus measurements of the number of checks that can be performed using various techniques.

Cite as:

Alessandro Coglio, “Checking Access to Protected Members in the Java Virtual Machine”, Journal of Object Technology, Volume 4, no. 8 (October 2005), pp. 55-76, doi:10.5381/jot.2005.4.8.a3.