Question

I have a class and in that class I have this:

 //some code
 private int[] data = new int[3];
 //some code

Then in my constructor:

public Date(){
    data[0] = 0;
    data[1] = 0;
    data[2] = 0;
}

If I do this, everything is OK. Default data values are initialized but if I instead do this:

public Date(){
    int[] data = {0,0,0};
}

It says:

Local variable hides a field

Why?

What’s the best way to initialize an array inside the constructor?

Answer 1

private int[] data = new int[3];

This already initializes your array elements to 0. You don’t need to repeat that again in the constructor.

In your constructor it should be:

data = new int[]{0, 0, 0};