Jump subroutine

Format

jsr

branchbyte1

branchbyte2

Forms

jsr = 113 (0x71)

Stack

… → …, address

Description

The address of the opcode of the instruction immediately following this jsr instruction is pushed onto the operand stack as a value of type returnAddress. The unsigned branchbyte1 and branchbyte2 are used to construct a signed 16-bit offset, where the offset is (branchbyte1 « 8) | branchbyte2. Execution proceeds at that offset from the address of this jsr instruction. The target address must be that of an opcode of an instruction within the method that contains this jsr instruction.

Notes

The jsr instruction is used with the ret instruction in the implementation of the finally clause of the Java language. Note that jsr pushes the address onto the stack and ret gets it out of a local variable. This asymmetry is intentional.