This instruction assigns a class literal to a variable and then never uses it.
The behavior of this differs in Java 1.4 and in Java 5.
In Java 1.4 and earlier, a reference to Foo.class
would force the static initializer
for Foo
to be executed, if it has not been executed already.
In Java 5 and later, it does not.
See Sun's article on Java SE compatibility for more details and examples, and suggestions on how to force class initialization in Java 5.