static strings

[Chris Meijers]

Took the exam this morning and passed with 77%. Good exam, but it made me wonder about a few things. When a class contains a static string member, I thought it was automatically initialized to "". So I could use it in an instance method (to print it for example). But now I am not so sure anymore. Any clarification?

[Oliver Grass]

Hi Chris,
congrats for the 77%. Not bad... :-))

Originally posted by Chris Meijers:
When a class contains a static string member, I thought it was automatically initialized to "". So I could use it in an instance method (to print it for example). But now I am not so sure anymore. Any clarification?

Nope, that's not right...
String is an Object, and object will always be initialized with null.

public class Test {
private static String s;

public static void main(String[] args){

System.out.println("s = " + s);
}
}

You will get s = null as output.
Hope that clarifies a bit, correct me if i'm wrong
Oliver