Bug report from Christian Wimmer of the C1 collaborative research project:

While analyzing the NullCheckEliminator for the object inlining work, I
found a possible problem where necessary explicit null checks are
eliminated. The attached java class illustrates the problem: An explicit
null check is folded into a later field load, but between the two
instructions there is a class cast that fails. Therefore, the class cast
exception is thrown before the null check is performed. I think that the
order of the exceptions must be preserved, so this behavior is not allowed.

The null check eliminator contains a NEEDS_CLEANUP-comment that states
exactly this, so you possibly already know about this.


Example: If you run the attached class in the interpreter using

  java -Xint NullCheckTest
  
a NullPointerException is thrown. When the method is compiled using

  java -Xcomp -XX:CompileOnly=NullCheckTest.test NullCheckTest
  
a ClassCastException is thrown.