Missing Method Signature In Stack Dump (Java 1.4)

Question

I am looking for a way the get the signature of the methods in the call stack. Currently the printStackTrace() or getStackTrace() only allows me to see the method names and not the number of arguments and argument types. How can I get access to these informations at runtime?
Is the only solution to read in the sourcefile (.java) and extract the (in the stack) given linenumber? What if I dont have direct access/permission to the involved source code?
Regards
Johannes Beyer

Answer 1

Perhaps you are approaching the problem incorrectly?
I see stack trace exceptions all the time from the java SDK code. There is never any need for me to look at it. Because the problem is always with my code. My code is passing a null pointer or the wrong length or calling method two before method one. Always my problem.
Of course bugs do happen. But if it was me I would make absolutely certain that the problem was not in my code first.
Presumably you have already done that. So if you are sure the problem lies in the someone elses code then you can get one of the java decompilers and use it to reverse the 3rd party code, but only if they haven't fixed their code to make that impossible. You might want to also create a small test script that demonstrates the problem and send it to the tech support for the 3rd party - sometimes they will be so grateful that they will send a new patched version back to (not to mention maybe your business contract requires them to send you a patch.)