Why does a long cfc file work in CF8, but not CF9? Getting "Branch target offset too large for short" error.

Question

I have a fairly long cfc file, about 1800 lines long, that worked fine in ColdFusion 8, but after upgrading my development system to ColdFusion 9 and doing some testing I get a compile error for a cfc and the message says "Branch target offset too large for short". I modified the file to eliminate some unused functions and consolidated one to make it shorter and this resolved the problem to get it to work. But still, why did it die on me now when I upgraded to CF9? Anyone else run into this problem in previous or the current version of ColdFusion? Are there any solutions other than modifying the cfc file such as upgrading the jvm?

EDIT If you have an answer to the questions I have, great! Post that, but don't waste time telling me something that I already know. If you are going to post a response, please read the question carefully and answer only if you know the answer. Don't do a google search and post crap that I already know and utilized to get the code to work. The question is, why did it work in CF8 and now not in CF9? Are there other solutions besides what I did?

Answer 1

If you haven't already, try running the Code Analyzer in the CFAdmin page, "Debugging & Logging > Code Analyzer". This is a useful tool to find some changes which were made in the language between CF8 and CF9.

We had to change several variable names and function names as CF added them in 9.

Also check here:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/CFMLRef/WSc3ff6d0ea77859461172e0811cbec22c24-7ff0.html