Question

Here is example code:

class A {

   static {
       int a;
       class B {
       }
   }

   public static void main(String[] args){
       // cannot access class B and in a;
   }
}

I don’t know what the static keyword in this context means. I declare an int variable and a class inside it. But I cannot use it inside class A or in the main method. I compile and it doesn’t produce any errors. So, I think this type of declaration has some purpose.

Answer 1

This is a static initialization block. You can use this to collect initialization for static/class members.

Similarly you can have a non-static initialization block to initialize instance members for each new object:

class A
{
    static int a;

    private int b;

    // static/class initialization:
    static
    {
        // initialize class members
        a = 5;
    }

    // instance initialization:
    {
        // initialize instance members
        b = 5;
    }
}

This example is trivial, you could instead just initialize the variables in their declaration: static int a = 5, and in fact generally that would be clearer. But use an initialization block when the initialization is multi-step, or generally more complicated, for example, setting up a database connection.

For more examples, see: Initializing Fields from the java tutorials.