Re: Compiler program platform-independant?

From:

Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 13:16:18 -0500

Message-ID:

<ig7l9j$ld0$1@news.eternal-september.org>

On 01/07/2011 12:05 PM, Screamin Lord Byron wrote:

On Thu, 06 Jan 2011 15:24:34 -0800, markspace wrote:

On 1/6/2011 3:05 PM, Julien ?LIE wrote:

Suppose I have test.java and I want to compile it with Java SE 6 Update
23 on different OSes and hardwares; would it generate the same
test.class file ("the same" means that it is exactly the same file --
same MD5 checksum for instance).

I think everyone has consistently been saying 1) we don't know, and 2)
Sun/Oracle doesn't seem to make any such guarantee.

I think you are likely to get exactly the same byte codes, but I
wouldn't count on it. If your process will absolutely break due to
different byte codes, make a more robust process.

But why would it break anyway? Maybe it's a bad comparison, but I compare
that to, say, compiling C code with different C compilers or with different
optimization options of the same compiler.

Comparing the binary output of class files, perhaps for backup purposes
or something.

--
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth