Java Virtual Machine (Java Series)

wide

wide <instruction> <parameter> [<parameter>] Note that the Jasmin assembler automatically widens instructions as necessary - so the wide instruction is optional in Jasmin.

Stack

wide is placed in front of an instruction that accesses a local variable. You use it to extend the range of local variables available to the instruction from 8 bits (i.e. 0-255) to 16 bits (i.e. 0-65535). In addition, for iinc, it increases the increment range. wide is used in conjunction with one of the following opcodes: aload, dload, iload, fload, lload, astore, dstore, istore, fstore, lstore, iinc and ret. See the reference pages of those instructions for more details.

Bytecode

There are two bytecode formats. For aload, dload, iload, fload, lload, astore, dstore, istore, fstore, lstore, and ret, use:

aload, iload, fload, dload, lload, astore, istore, fstore, dstore, lstore, iinc, ret

Notes

The opcode that follows wide cannot be the target of a branch.

Java Virtual Machine, by Jon Meyer and Troy Downing, O'Reilly Associates