7.5.1 LocalVariableModifiers Attribute

The LocalVariableModifiers attribute represents the BML modifiers of local variables declared in the method code. The structure of the attribute is the following:

     LocalVariableModifiers_attribute {
       u2 attribute_name_index;
       u4 attribute_length;
       u2 local_variables_count;
       {
         u2 BML_flags;
         u2 index;
       } local_variables[local_variables_count];
     }

The meaning of the fields is the following:

• attribute_name_index - index in the constant pool of the attribute name (org.bmlspecs.LocalVariableModifiers)
• attribute_length - length in bytes of the whole structure (8+2*parameters_count)
• local_variables_count - the number of local variables in the table.
• local_variables - the table of local variable descriptions, where each element is a structure containing one field:
  • BML_flags - the flags that are set for the method. The allowed flags are BML_NON_NULL, BML_NULLABLE, BML_FINAL. JCh: anything else? All other flags should be cleared.
  • index - the index of the variable in the local variable array

This table is the closely related to the information contained in the The ParameterTable attribute. All local variables which are not parameters must be described here [JCh: is this true? May-be those without modifier could be skipped? and those which are parameters must not be described.

This attribute, together with The ParameterTable attribute complete the information about local variables contained in The LocalVariableTable attribute.