counter

A counter of how many times this edge has been traversed. This will be used to determine the amount of effort to apply to subsequent re-optimization attempts, modulating inlining, order of tests, whether to optimize for space, run time, or compile time; that sort of thing. The counter itself (a LongAdder) is passed as a constant through a special class loader, and captured as a final constant within the L2Chunk's class.

Most edges don't benefit from having a counter, and a final optimized form has no need for any counters, so this field can be null.