Question

I had the impression that Class.forName(String className) used the Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader() to load the class but apparently that isn’t the case.

Hence my question, what ClassLoader does Class.forName use by default? is it the ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader()?

and what’s the difference between Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader() and ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader()?

Answer 1

It uses the caller’s classloader. From the documentation:

Returns the Class object associated with the class or interface with the given string name. Invoking this method is equivalent to:

Class.forName(className, true, currentLoader)

where currentLoader denotes the defining class loader of the current class.