weird static block

[Yuan Ye]

There is a weird case in static block initialization with a static variable. It seems you can put the static block before the declaration, since the following code works! but why?

  
public class StaticTest {
static {
i = 200;
}
static int i;
}

To make things more weird, the following code won't work! You can't refer the static variable. Error message: "illegal forward reference". Why?

  
public class StaticTest {
static {
i = 200;
System.out.println(i);
}
static int i;
}

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Please don't post duplicate messages -- it just wastes people's time. I'm closing this one and leaving this other one open.