List of Java class file format major version numbers?

Question

I saw this list of major version numbers for Java in another post:

• Java 1.2 uses major version 46
• Java 1.3 uses major version 47

Answer 1

These come from the class version. If you try to load something compiled for java 6 in a java 5 runtime you'll get the error, incompatible class version, got 50, expected 49. Or something like that.

See here in byte offset 7 for more info.

Additional info can also be found here.