Weird eclipse compilation error with Java

Question

I'm getting this weird compilation error with eclipse in the following code block. I've included the necessary jars and also tried restarting eclipse but no avail.

 public class ControlServlet extends HttpServlet {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
ResourceBundle rb1;// error on this line
rb1 = ResourceBundle.getBundle("connection_config");
Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(ControlServlet.class);

The error message displayed is:

Multiple markers at this line
- Syntax error on token ";", , expected
- Watchpoint:ControlServlet [access and 
 modification] - rb1.

Any idea why this could be happening ? And how I could work around this would be helpful.

Answer 1

You are getting this error because you can not write assignment statement and declaration as 2 statements in a class (outside of any method or static block with class variables).

So your error is actually on this statement:

rb1 = ResourceBundle.getBundle("connection_config");

You can not write such a statement in class without surrounding static/method block. cannot write outside of any method or any initialization block (static or non-static). So you have to combine your 2 statements into 1 like:

ResourceBundle rb1 = ResourceBundle.getBundle("connection_config");

Answer 2

You may have to replace this

ResourceBundle rb1;// error on this line
rb1 = ResourceBundle.getBundle("connection_config");

with this

ResourceBundle rb1 = ResourceBundle.getBundle("connection_config");

In Java, we can only have variable declaration statements, an initialization block(static and non-static), and method defintions inside a class directly. All other statements like assignment statements, control statements, etc., must be inside an initialization block or inside a method definition.

Here, rb1 = ResourceBundle.getBundle("connection_config"); is an assignment statement, which is not permitted to put directly inside a class. That is why, we have to combine the declaration, and assignment statements to one like ResourceBundle rb1 = ResourceBundle.getBundle("connection_config");.