Maximum size of a method in Java 7 and 8

Question

I know that a method cannot be larger than 64 KB with Java. The limitation causes us problems with generated code from a JavaCC grammar. We had problems with Java 6 and

Answer 1

Good question. As always we should go to the source to find the answer ("The Java® Virtual Machine Specification"). The section does not explicitly mention a limit (as did the Java6 VM spec) though, but somewhat circumspectly:

The greatest number of local variables in the local variables array of a frame created upon invocation of a method (§2.6) is limited to 65535 by the size of the max_locals item of the Code attribute (§4.7.3) giving the code of the method, and by the 16-bit local variable indexing of the Java Virtual Machine instruction set.

Cheers,