Static Initialization Blocks

Question

As far as I understood the \"static initialization block\" is used to set values of static field if it cannot be done in one line.

But I do not understand why we ne

Answer 1

I would say static block is just syntactic sugar. There is nothing you could do with static block and not with anything else.

To re-use some examples posted here.

This piece of code could be re-written without using static initialiser.

Method #1: With static

private static final HashMap MAP;
static {
    MAP.put("banana", "honey");
    MAP.put("peanut butter", "jelly");
    MAP.put("rice", "beans");
  }

Method #2: Without static

private static final HashMap MAP = getMap();
private static HashMap getMap()
{
    HashMap ret = new HashMap<>();
    ret.put("banana", "honey");
    ret.put("peanut butter", "jelly");
    ret.put("rice", "beans");
    return ret;
}