/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *   https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
 * under the License.
 */
package org.apache.bcel.generic;

/**
 * Denotes that an instruction may start the process of loading and resolving the referenced class in the Virtual Machine.
 */
public interface LoadClass {

    /**
     * Returns the {@link ObjectType} of the referenced class or interface that may be loaded and resolved.
     *
     * @param cpg A ConstantPoolGen.
     * @return object type that may be loaded or null if a primitive is referenced.
     */
    ObjectType getLoadClassType(ConstantPoolGen cpg);

    /**
     * Returns the type associated with this instruction. LoadClass instances are always typed, but this type does not always refer to the type of the class or
     * interface that it possibly forces to load. For example, {@link GETFIELD} would return the type of the field and not the type of the class where the field
     * is defined. If no class is forced to be loaded, {@code null} is returned. An example for this is an {@link NEWARRAY} instruction that creates an
     * {@code int[][]}.
     *
     * @param cpg A ConstantPoolGen.
     * @return the type associated with this instruction.
     * @see #getLoadClassType(ConstantPoolGen)
     */
    Type getType(ConstantPoolGen cpg);
}
