Devirtualizing method calls in Java

If you've read code I wrote, chances are you've seen I'm a strong adept of const correctness (WP). Naturally, when I started writing Java code (to my despair), I became equally adept of "final correctness". This is mostly because the keywords const (C/C++) and final (Java/Scala) are truly here to help the compiler help you. Many things aren't supposed to change. References in a given scope are often not made point to another object, various methods aren't supposed to be overridden, most classes aren't designed to be subclassed, etc. In C/C++ const also helps avoid doing unintentional pointer arithmetic. So when something isn't supposed to happen, if you state it explicitly, you allow the compiler to catch and report any violation of this otherwise implicit assumption.

The other aspect of const correctness is that you also help the compiler itself. Often the extra bit of information enables it to produce more efficient code. In Java especially, final plays an important role in thread safety, and when used on Strings as well as built-in types. Here's an example of the latter:

     1 final class concat {
     2   public static void main(final String[] _) {
     3     String a = "a";
     4     String b = "b";
     5     System.out.println(a + b);
     6     final String X = "X";
     7     final String Y = "Y";
     8     System.out.println(X + Y);
     9   }
    10 }

Which gets compiled to:

public static void main(java.lang.String[]);
  Code:
   0: ldc #2; //String a
   2: astore_1
   3: ldc #3; //String b
   5: astore_2
   6: getstatic #4; //Field java/lang/System.out:Ljava/io/PrintStream;
   9: new #5; //class java/lang/StringBuilder
   12: dup
   13: invokespecial #6; //Method java/lang/StringBuilder."":()V
   16: aload_1
   17: invokevirtual #7; //Method java/lang/StringBuilder.append:(Ljava/lang/String;)Ljava/lang/StringBuilder;
   20: aload_2
   21: invokevirtual #7; //Method java/lang/StringBuilder.append:(Ljava/lang/String;)Ljava/lang/StringBuilder;
   24: invokevirtual #8; //Method java/lang/StringBuilder.toString:()Ljava/lang/String;
   27: invokevirtual #9; //Method java/io/PrintStream.println:(Ljava/lang/String;)V
   30: getstatic #4; //Field java/lang/System.out:Ljava/io/PrintStream;
   33: ldc #10; //String XY
   35: invokevirtual #9; //Method java/io/PrintStream.println:(Ljava/lang/String;)V
   38: return
}

In the original code, lines 3-4-5 are identical to lines 6-7-8 modulo the presence of two final keywords. Yet, lines 3-4-5 get compiled to 14 byte code instructions (lines 0 through 27), whereas 6-7-8 turn into only 3 (lines 30 through 35). I find it kind of amazing that the compiler doesn't even bother optimizing such a simple piece of code, even when used with the -O flag which, most people say, is almost a no-op as of Java 1.3 – at least I checked in OpenJDK6, and it's truly a no-op there, the flag is only accepted for backwards compatibility. OpenJDK6 has a -XO flag instead, but the Sun Java install that comes on Mac OS X doesn't recognize it...

There was another thing that I thought was a side effect of final. I thought any method marked final, or any method in a class marked final would allow the compiler to devirtualize method calls. Well, it turns out that I was wrong. Not only it doesn't do this, but also the JVM considers this compile-time optimization downright illegal! Only the JIT compiler is allowed to do it.

All method calls in Java are compiled to an invokevirtual byte code instruction, except:

• Constructors and private method use invokespecial.
• Static methods use invokestatic.
• Virtual method calls on objects with a static type that is an interface use invokeinterface.

The last one is weird, one might wonder why special-case virtual method calls when the static type is an interface. The reason essentially boils down to the fact that if the static type is not an interface, then we know at compile-time what entry in the vtable to use for that method, and all we have to do at runtime is essentially to read that entry from the vtable. If the static type is an interface, the compiler doesn't even know which entry in the vtable will be used, as this will depend at what point in the class hierarchy the interface will be used.

Anyway, I always imagined that having a final method meant that the compiler would compile all calls to it using invokespecial instead of invokevirtual, to "devirtualize" the method calls since it already knows for sure at compile-time where to transfer execution. Doing this at compile time seems like a trivial optimization, while leaving this up to the JIT is far more complex. But no, the compiler doesn't do this. It's not even legal to do it!

interface iface {
  int foo();
}

class base implements iface {
  public int foo() {
    return (int) System.nanoTime();
  }
}

final class sealed extends base {  // Implies that foo is final
}

final class sealedfinal extends base {
  public final int foo() {  // Redefine it to be sure / help the compiler.
    return super.foo();
  }
}

public final class devirt {
  public static void main(String[] a) {
    int n = 0;
    final iface i = new base();
    n ^= i.foo();              // invokeinterface
    final base b = new base();
    n ^= b.foo();              // invokevirtual
    final sealed s = new sealed();
    n ^= s.foo();              // invokevirtual
    final sealedfinal s = new sealedfinal();
    n ^= s.foo();              // invokevirtual
  }
}

A simple Caliper benchmark also shows that in practice all 4 calls above have exactly the same performance characteristic (see full microbenchmark). This seems to indicate that the JIT compiler is able to devirtualize the method calls in all these cases.

To try to manually devirtualize one of the last two calls, I applied a binary patch (courtesy of xxd) on the .class generated by javac. After doing this, javap correctly shows an invokespecial instruction. To my dismay the JVM then rejects the byte code: Exception in thread "main" java.lang.VerifyError: (class: devirt, method: timeInvokeFinalFinal signature: (I)I) Illegal use of nonvirtual function call

I find the wording of the JLS slightly ambiguous as to whether or not this is truly illegal, but in any case the Sun JVM rejects it, so it can't be used anyway.

The moral of the story is that javac is really only translating Java code into pre-parsed Java code. Nothing interesting happens at all in the "compiler", which should really be called the pre-parser. They don't even bother doing any kind of trivial optimization. Everything is left up to the JIT compiler. Also Java byte code is bloated, but then it's normal, it's Java :)