alvin alexander

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How to disassemble and decompile Scala code (javap, scalac, jad)

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: July 24 2019

This is an excerpt from the Scala Cookbook (partially modified for the internet). This is Recipe 14.6, “How to disassemble and decompile Scala code.”

Problem: In the process of learning Scala, or trying to understand a particular problem, you want to examine the source code and bytecode the Scala compiler generates from your original source code.

Solution: You can use several different approaches to see how your Scala source code is translated:

Java’s javap command doesn’t show private members (by default)

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: July 23 2018

As I was just reminded, Java’s javap command doesn’t show private members by default. You have to use the -p option of javap to see private members.

I was just reminded of that when using the Scala REPL. Given this Person class with a private constructor field named name:

class Person(private var name: String)

javap without the -p option shows this:

You can run the `javap` command inside the Scala REPL

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: March 8 2018

As shown in the image, I was just reminded that you can run javap inside the Scala REPL. The REPL help command shows some other things you can do:

scala> :help

All commands can be abbreviated, e.g., :he instead of :help.
:edit <id>|<line>        edit history
:help [command]          print this summary or command-specific help
:history [num]           show the history (optional num is commands to show)
:h? <string>             search the history
:imports [name name ...] show import history, identifying sources of names
:implicits [-v]          show the implicits in scope
:javap <path|class>      disassemble a file or class name
:line <id>|<line>        place line(s) at the end of history
:load <path>             interpret lines in a file
:paste [-raw] [path]     enter paste mode or paste a file
:power                   enable power user mode
:quit                    exit the interpreter
:replay [options]        reset the repl and replay all previous commands
:require <path>          add a jar to the classpath
:reset [options]         reset the repl to its initial state, forgetting all session entries
:save <path>             save replayable session to a file
:sh <command line>       run a shell command (result is implicitly => List[String])
:settings <options>      update compiler options, if possible; see reset
:silent                  disable/enable automatic printing of results
:type [-v] <expr>        display the type of an expression without evaluating it
:kind [-v] <type>        display the kind of a type. see also :help kind
:warnings                show the suppressed warnings from the most recent line which had any
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A look at how the Scala `lazy val` syntax gets converted into Java code (bytecode)

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: March 22 2019

Table of Contents

  1. A little `lazy val` conversion example
  2. A second `lazy val` conversion example
  3. One more `lazy val` conversion example
  4. The end
Table of Contents1 - A little `lazy val` conversion example2 - A second `lazy val` conversion example3 - One more `lazy val` conversion example4 - The end

I don’t have any major conclusions to share in this blog post, but ... what I was curious about is how Scala implements “lazy val” fields. That is, when the Scala code I write is translated into a .class file and bytecode that a JVM can understand, what does that resulting code look like?

Converting a Scala class file to decompiled Java source code

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: July 3 2017

As a Scala newbie, I'm curious about how the process of converting a Scala class back to Java source code works. What I really want to see is how my Scala source code is converted to Java source code. Besides plain old curiosity, I think that understanding more about how Scala works can also be very important to my understanding of Scala (such as the apply() method, and so on).

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