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 * DO NOT ALTER OR REMOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICES OR THIS FILE HEADER.

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 * under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 only, as

 * published by the Free Software Foundation.  Oracle designates this

 * particular file as subject to the "Classpath" exception as provided

 * by Oracle in the LICENSE file that accompanied this code.

 *

 * This code is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT

 * ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or

 * FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License

 * version 2 for more details (a copy is included in the LICENSE file that

 * accompanied this code).

 *

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 * 2 along with this work; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,

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 *

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/**

 * Provides classes and interfaces for obtaining reflective information about

 * classes and objects.  Reflection allows programmatic access to information

 * about the fields, methods, and constructors of loaded classes, and the use

 * of reflected fields, methods, and constructors to operate on their underlying

 * counterparts, within encapsulation and security restrictions.

 *

 * <p>Classes in this package, along with {@code java.lang.Class}

 * accommodate applications such as debuggers, interpreters, object

 * inspectors, class browsers, and services such as Object

 * Serialization and JavaBeans that need access to either the public

 * members of a target object (based on its runtime class) or the

 * members declared by a given class.

 *

 * <p>{@link AccessibleObject} allows suppression of access checks if

 * the necessary {@link ReflectPermission} is available.

 *

 * <p>{@link Array} provides static methods to dynamically create and

 * access arrays.

 *

 * <h2><a id="LanguageJvmModel">Java programming language and JVM modeling in core reflection</a></h2>

 *

 * The components of core reflection, which include types in this

 * package as well as {@link java.lang.Class Class}, {@link

 * java.lang.Package Package}, and {@link java.lang.Module Module},

 * fundamentally present a JVM model of the entities in question

 * rather than a Java programming language model.  A Java compiler,

 * such as {@code javac}, translates Java source code into executable

 * output that can be run on a JVM, primarily {@code class}

 * files. Compilers for source languages other than Java can and do

 * target the JVM as well.

 *

 * <p>The translation process, including from Java language sources,

 * to executable output for the JVM is not a one-to-one

 * mapping. Structures present in the source language may have no

 * representation in the output and structures <em>not</em> present in

 * the source language may be present in the output. The latter are

 * called <i>synthetic</i> structures. Synthetic structures can

 * include {@linkplain Method#isSynthetic() methods}, {@linkplain

 * Field#isSynthetic() fields}, {@linkplain Parameter#isSynthetic()

 * parameters}, {@linkplain Class#isSynthetic() classes and

 * interfaces}. One particular kind of synthetic method is a

 * {@linkplain Method#isBridge() bridge method}. It is possible a

 * synthetic structure may not be marked as such. In particular, not

 * all {@code class} file versions support marking a parameter as

 * synthetic. A source language compiler generally has multiple ways

 * to translate a source program into a {@code class} file

 * representation. The translation may also depend on the version of

 * the {@code class} file format being targeted as different {@code

 * class} file versions have different capabilities and features. In

 * some cases the modifiers present in the {@code class} file

 * representation may differ from the modifiers on the originating

 * element in the source language, including {@link Modifier#FINAL

 * final} on a {@linkplain Parameter#getModifiers() parameter} and

 * {@code protected}, {@code private}, and {@code static} on

 * {@linkplain java.lang.Class#getModifiers() classes and interfaces}.

 *

 * <p>Besides differences in structural representation between the

 * source language and the JVM representation, core reflection also

 * exposes runtime specific information. For example, the {@linkplain

 * java.lang.Class#getClassLoader() class loaders} and {@linkplain

 * java.lang.Class#getProtectionDomain() protection domains} of a

 * {@code Class} are runtime concepts without a direct analogue in

 * source code.

 *

 * @jls 13.1 The Form of a Binary

 * @jvms 1.2 The Java Virtual Machine

 * @jvms 4.7.8 The Synthetic Attribute

 * @jvms 5.3.1 Loading Using the Bootstrap Class Loader

 * @jvms 5.3.2 Loading Using a User-defined Class Loader

 * @since 1.1

 * @revised 9

 */

package java.lang.reflect;