Programmer's Guide to Java™ Certification, A: A Comprehensive Primer, Second Edition

2.4. Initial Values for Variables

Default Values for Fields

Default values for fields of primitive data types and reference types are listed in Table 2.14. The value assigned depends on the type of the field.

Table 2.14. Default Values

Data Type	Default Value
boolean	false
char	'\u0000'
Integer (byte, short, int, long)	0L for long, 0 for others
Floating-point (float, double)	0.0F or 0.0D
Reference types	null

If no initialization is provided for a static variable either in the declaration or in a static initializer block (see Section 8.2, p. 336), it is initialized with the default value of its type when the class is loaded.

Similarly, if no initialization is provided for an instance variable either in the declaration or in an instance initializer block (see ...