why local variable need to be initialized?

[bhuvi mdu]

Hi,

Can anyone say why local variable need to be initialized? I knew that if it is not initialized it will throw compile time error but i wanna know the reason why it shud be initialized?


bhuvi

[Timmy Marks]

When you allocate resources for a local variable, Java doesn't write a value into the memory. The reason you get an error is because Java makes sure you give it a value before you use it. Sun realized that this can be a difficult problem to diagnose in C code, because you don't get help from the compiler, so they decided to check it at compile time.

[bhuvi mdu]

thanx for ur answer Timmy Marks



bhuvi

[Layne Lund]

From my point of view, the reason is because that's the way the creators of Java said we have to do it. It's very likely that their reasons for this decision are along the lines of what Timmy said above.

Layne

[David Harkness]

Note that every variable must be initialized before it is used. It's easy to miss this because the JVM initializes all instance and static members whether you want it to or not.

I suspect the reason for the difference in behavior involved many late nights of frenetic nerf gun battles in the Sun hallways.

James: Auto-initializing variables is ugly and wasteful! The compiler run your code through a proof engine to ensure every constructor call results in exactly one initialization per variable.

Patrick: Do you realize how hard that would be? *ducks* Besides, 83.2% of all class members are initialized to the same defaults, so we save the developers keystrokes!

James: Hey! I got you, cheater! You're out.

Patrick: No way man -- prove it!

Yes, I think that's exactly how it went down. Such reverent times they were. . .