Unhandled exceptions in field initializations

Question

Does Java have any syntax for managing exceptions that might be thrown when declaring and initializing a class's member variable?

public class MyClass {   // Doesn't compile because constructor can throw IOException   private static MyFileWriter x = new MyFileWriter("foo.txt");    ... } 

Or do such initializations always have to be moved into a method where we can declare throws IOException or wrap the initialization in a try-catch block?

Answer 1

Use a static initialization block

public class MyClass {   private static MyFileWriter x;    static {     try {       x = new MyFileWriter("foo.txt");      } catch (Exception e) {       logging_and _stuff_you_might_want_to_terminate_the_app_here_blah();     } // end try-catch   } // end static init block   ... }