When Class.forName() executes what internally happens?

[Praveen palukuri]

Using Class.forName("****") we can load the class at runtime. Apart from this can any specify what happens internally when we call this ?

Thanks in Advance.

[Jesper de Jong]

Class.forName(...) loads the class that you specify using the current ClassLoader.

What do you want to know more, what the JVM internally does when you call this?

You can have a look at the source code. In your JDK folder, you should have a file called src.zip. In this file, lookup the source code for class java.lang.Class. If you look at the implementation of forName(...) it looks like this:

public static Class<?> forName(String className) throws ClassNotFoundException {
    return forName0(className, true, ClassLoader.getCallerClassLoader());
}

So, it calls forName0. If you lookup the source for forName0, it looks like this:

private static native Class forName0(String name, boolean initialize, ClassLoader loader) throws ClassNotFoundException;

It's a native method, so if you'd want to know what it does, you'd need to get the native source code of the JDK; have a look here if you're really interested.