The Java® Virtual Machine Specification, Java SE 7 Edition, Third Edition

4.6. Methods

Each method, including each instance initialization method (§2.9) and the class or interface initialization method (§2.9), is described by a method_info structure. No two methods in one class file may have the same name and descriptor (§4.3.3).

The structure has the following format:

method_info {    u2             access_flags;    u2             name_index;    u2             descriptor_index;    u2             attributes_count;    attribute_info attributes[attributes_count];}

The items of the method_info structure are as follows:

access_flags

The value of the access_flags item is a mask of flags used to denote access permission to and properties of this method. The interpretation of each flag, when set, is as shown in Table 4.5 ...