Static Member Initialization

[Prithvi Sehgal]

Hello All,

This piece of code is taken from k&B book chapter 2.

 
class Alpha{
  static String s = " ";
 protected Alpha(){
      s += "alpha " ; 
 }

}

class SubAlpha extends Alpha{
    private SubAlpha(){
    s += "sub ";    
}
}


public class SubSubAlpha extends Alpha{
   private SubSubAlpha(){
        s += "subsub ";
   }
   
  public static void main(String[] args){
   new SubSubAlpha();
  System.out.println(s);
  }
}

My question is this, as static variables are class variables. So when class is loaded in JVM, then value of s is initialized to alpha subsub.
Or when the constructor of SubSubAlpha() is created?

Thanks,

[Tim McGuire]

not when class is loaded into JVM.

the constructor for the super class runs first.

so s is first set to "alpha" by the constructor in Class Alpha

then, the constructor for SubSubAlpha runs and s ends up as "alpha subsub"

[Harpreet Singh janda]

When the class wil be loaded, s will be inialized to " " (space)
and will be re-initialized to "alpha subsub" when a new object of the class SubSubAlpha will be created (Line no 23).

[Abimaran Kugathasan]

Try this...

class Alpha	{
	static String s = "ALPHA 1 ";

	protected Alpha()	{
		s += " alpha ";
	}
}

class SubAlpha extends Alpha	{
	static	{
		s += "SUBALPHA 2 ";
	}
	private SubAlpha()	{
		s += " sub ";
	}
}


public class SubSubAlpha extends Alpha	{
	static	{
			s += "SUBSUBALPHA 3 ";
	}
	private SubSubAlpha()	{
		s += " subsub ";
	}

	public static void main(String[] args)	{
		new SubSubAlpha();
		System.out.println(s);
	}
}