You can't do a subclass, no, but you can write your own BuggyClass
entirely and make sure it appears earlier in the classpath than the real one. I don't think it's documented, but the default classloader seems to typically use the first matching class it finds.
But obviously this is a Really Bad Option, so you want to exhaust every other avenue before trying to solve temporarily work around the underlying problem this way.
Example: Suppose we have this:
// The "buggy" class
package somepackage;
public class BuggyClass {
public String someMethod() {
return "I'm in the buggy class";
}
}
and this:
// Uses the "buggy" class
package somepackage;
public class BuggyClassUser {
public String useBuggyClass() {
BuggyClass c = new BuggyClass();
return c.someMethod();
}
}
compiled and the classes in buggy.jar
. Then we have this test class:
import somepackage.*;
public class Test {
public static final void main(String[] args) {
BuggyClassUser u = new BuggyClassUser();
System.out.println(u.useBuggyClass());
}
}
If we run that (*nix format classpath):
java -cp .:buggy.jar Test
...we see
I'm in the buggy class
But if we create a somepackage
directory and put this in it:
package somepackage;
public class BuggyClass {
public String someMethod() {
return "I'm in the fixed class"; // <== Difference here
}
}
...and compile that, since we have that in our classpath in front of the jar, this command:
java -cp .:buggy.jar Test
...now gives us this:
I'm in the fixed class
Again, this is very, very much a workaround, not a solution.