Help needed to figure out a strange thing

Question

I am running GJ and Java 1.4 on window 2k and I have been spending hours trying to figure out what's wrong with the following codes. Any help would be greatly appreciated. The code is simplified (doesn't use any util class at all), but it still throws runtime exception:
C:\test>java D
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.AbstractMethodError: E.test()LE;
at C.test(C.java:1)
at D.main(D.java:17)
The strange thing is that, when I change the name of class E to B, it runs fine. It seems that classes B and C have to be ordered. For example, using name C1 and C2 will be fine, but using C2 and C1 throws exception. It's getting late and I am tired.
public interface A {
public A test();
public abstract class E implements A {
public abstract E test();
public abstract class C extends E {
public C() {}
// the main class
import java.io.*;
public class D extends C {
public D() {
super();
public D test() {
System.out.println("D called");
return new D();
public static void main(String[] agrs) {
A obj = new D();
obj.test();

Answer 1

Its a bug. The compiler neglected to generate a required bridge method.
I have reported 4821489 for this problem.