That's what ClassLoaders do, but loadClass() maps from classname (not
filename) to Class. That doesn't prevent you from writing your own
though.

/gordon

--

I suspect there are a number of fundamentals you have missed..

1. a File object is just a file name description.  It need not be
associated with an actual file.  You can create them from Strings with
the File constructor. You can get a list of all the files in a
directory with File.list.  You can filter them in various ways so you
just get the *.class or *.txt etc. by writing a FilenameFilter and
using that with File.list.  See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/file.html
for details.

It is highly unusual for newbies to do anything at all directly with
*.class files.  You just use classes and the JVM finds the associated
*.class file, loads it and converts it to machine code, and does the
static init.

However it is  possible do take control over class loading (convert
*.class file to a Class object) either using Class.forName or by
writing a ClassLoader. These are relatively advanced things to do. See
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/classforname.html
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/classloader.html

However, a class file is just a mess of bytes, just like any other
file, so you can read it just as you can any other file.  You might
use DataInputStream.  See http://mindprod.com/applet/fileio.html
for crude experimenting.
See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/bcel.html if you want to read and
analyse the class file byte for byte.

If the class file is inside a zip, you can read it as a resource.
See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/resource.html