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RE: static member variables

Posted by Kishori Sharan on August 15, 2000 at 9:47 AM

Static methods cannot access non-static memeber variables because non-static memeber variables ( also called instance variables ) are created for each object ( also call instance ) of a class. So if you don't have any object of a class then there is no copy of instance variables. However, static member variables ( also called class memeber variables ) can exist without any object of that class. In fact they belong to class not to any particular object of that class. Since you can call static method of a class just using class name ( without creating object ) which non-static variable will it refer to because there may be any no. of non-static variables lying in the memory ( one for each object of that class ). Again non-static methods can refer to instance variables and when you call a non-static method java automatically referas to the copy of instance variable ( i mean which object's instance variable to refer to ) for the object you call the method for. The same problem would occur if you call non-static methods from static method. If we call a non-static method ( which refers to non-static member variables inside it ) from a static method then which copy of memeber variable the code in non-static method will refer to( because there is one copy non-static memeber variables for each object ).

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