another perplexing program

[Jim A Anderson]

The following code prints:
0
Why???
public class AQuestion
{
private int i = giveMeJ();
private int j = 10;
private int giveMeJ()
{
return j;
}
public static void main(String args[])
{
System.out.println((new AQuestion()).i);
}
}

[Vicken Karaoghlanian]

This link will prove to be helpful.

[Jim A Anderson]

Actually, the program shown in the link is just different enough from the program under consideration that the explanation given in the link doesn't seem to suffice for the present case.
The only explanation I can come up with is that when
private int i = giveMeJ();
is invoked, j has been given a default value of 0 and the j = 10 hasn't occurred yet.

[fred rosenberger]

if you change it to this

public class AQuestion
   {
   private int i = giveMeJ();
   private int j = 10;
 
   private int giveMeJ()
      {
      System.out.println("j is " + j);
      return j;
      }
   public static void main(String args[])
      {
      AQuestion aq = new AQuestion();
      System.out.println("i is " + aq.i);
      System.out.println("j is " + aq.j);
     }
  }

you can see that j is indeed 0 in the giveMeJ() method, but does get set to 10 in the object iteself.