Inside the Java 2 Virtual Machine: Amazon.co.uk: Bill Venners: Books

Amazon.co.uk Review

For the advanced Java developer, Inside the Java 2 Virtual Machine offers a detailed guide to the inner workings of today's Java Virtual Machines (JVMs), plus a complete reference to all bytecodes (the "machine code" for the language). For those who want to understand how Java really works, this book definitely delivers the goods, with excellent technical detail and demos of JVMs in action on the included CD-ROM.

This title provides a remarkably detailed tour of the internals of the Java platform, with plenty of technical information on the way virtual machines do business under the hood, from the way language statements are turned into bytecodes, to in-depth coverage of loading and invoking classes, security and garbage collection. The author demonstrates superior knowledge of Sun's Java Virtual Machine specification and explains the principles of its design and implementation, including a full explanation of how actual bytecodes are run on a VM. (Surprisingly, variables in Java are always processed on the stack, as there are no general CPU registers available, a very different architecture than most CPUs.) Each chapter includes applets that show off Java in action (for example, adding two numbers or showing off garbage collection).

The later part of this text covers over 200 Java bytecodes (mnemonic instructions for the JVM) by groups, and the book closes with a full listing of these opcodes (with over 150 pages of material). In all, Inside the Java 2 Virtual Machine serves as both a tutorial and reference to the architecture and inner operation of JVMs for any technically astute reader who wants to understand how Java really works. --Richard Dragan, Amazon.com

Topics covered: Java Virtual Machine (JVM) class architecture, the Java class loader, tips for platform independence, Java security, verifying class files, code-signing, network mobility, Jini basics, the organisation of Java .class files, Java object lifetimes, the linking model, garbage collection basics and algorithms, stack operations, type conversions, integer and floating-point arithmetic, objects and arrays, control flow, exceptions and finally clauses, method invocation, thread synchronisation, Java opcode and quickcode reference and JVM simulation demos.

Product Description

A manual on the Java 1.2 virtual machine. This new edition contains a new chapter providing a tutorial on using native methods with the JNI (Java Native Interface) specification. The CD-ROM contains source code examples from the book, interactive illustrations, Java Development Kit, and a resources Web site.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

A riveting read! 26 April 2000

By virtualvoid@totalise.co.uk

Format:Paperback

This is an essential text for anyone contemplating developing a virtual machine or writing debugging / interpreter tools and an excellent guide for java programmers intent on making their code fly. The book is full of examples to demonstrate the concepts concerning VM architecture and comes with an opcode reference section of great depth. Most of the content is simple to understand although I found a minimal knowledge of assembly / hardware helpful, especially comparing a traditional register-based hardware setup to the stack-based JVM. After reading this book there should be no excuses left for ditching javac and hand coding your bytecodes!

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One Best Book on JVM 15 Feb 1999

By A Customer

This book gives a great detailed description on the JVM. Mr Venners provided a very easy to read book on the supposed difficult topic without sacrificing any technically accuracy. Just wishes every technical books could be written like this one! This book would be perfect if the author gave a case study on an existing Java VM.

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