residence of static variable

[krishna prasad gunasekaran]

where do the static variables live in heap? inside instance variable or somewhere else?

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Hi,

Welcome to JavaRanch!

The Java VM specification doesn't say specifically, so they could be anywhere. Why does it matter to you?

[Jesper de Jong]

Certainly not inside an instance variable. The thing you need to remember is this:

For static member variables, there is only 1 copy of the variable for the whole class. All instances of the class share the same variable.

For non-static (= instance) member variables, there is 1 copy of the variable for every instance of the class. Each instance has its own copy of the variable.