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What are phantom entities?
Hi,
I am using Soot 2.0 and have come across Phantom Fields, Methods, and Classes. I can understand something that is native as
being marked as phantom to indicate that there is not true Java counterpart of that entity. Native methods in this case.
However, nativity by itself indicates this. If so, what extra information does "phatomness" provide? I am further more
confused when a field such as threadInitNumber in java.lang.Thread is marked as phantom.
Can somebody explain what does "phantom"ness mean in the context of a field, a method, and a class? How is it different from
abstract/native? Where and how is it used? Also, is concrete just a coarser notion that encompases abstract, native, and
phantom-ness in the context of methods?
waiting for reply,
--
Venkatesh Prasad Ranganath,
Dept. Computing and Information Science,
Kansas State University, US.
web: http://www.cis.ksu.edu/~rvprasad