Java instance variables initialization with method

Question

I am a little bit confused about the following piece of code:

public class Test{

  int x = giveH();
  int h = 29;

  public int giveH(){
     return h;
  }

  public static void main(String args[])
  {
      Test t = new Test();
      System.out.print(t.x + " ");
      System.out.print(t.h);          
  }
}

The output here is 0 29, but I thought that this has to be a compiler error, because the variable h should have not been initialized when it comes to the method giveH(). So, does the compilation go through the lines from top to bottom? Why is this working? Why is the value of x 0 and not 29?

Answer 1

The default value of int is 0 (see here). Because you initialize x before h, giveH will return the default value for a int (eg 0).

If you switch the order like this

int h = 29;
int x = giveH();

the output will be

29 29