illegal forward reference in java

Question

 import java.io.*;  import jxl.*;  class Xlparsing  {    Workbook wb =wb.getWorkbook(new File(     "C:\\Documents and Settings\\kmoorthi\\Desktop\\ak\\new.xls"));    // Illegal forward reference What it means    Sheet st = wb.getSheet(0);    Cell cell1 = st.getCell(0,0);    String a1 = cell1.getContents();    public static void main(String s[])    {      System.out.println(new Xlparsing().a1);    }  } 

Hi When I tried to extract data from excel sheet illegal forward reference error comes in the file object creation.

How to resolve this?

Answer 1

"Illegal forward reference" means that you are trying to use a variable before it is defined.

In this case, you are trying to invoke a method on wb in the declaration of wb.

Workbook wb = wb.getWorkbook(...); 

Answer 2

I guess that the intention was to call 'statically' the getWorkbook() method, as you should. So, you should change your wb member initialization as:

Workbook wb = Workbook.getWorkbook(...)