Ben Brosgol wrote:

> 2) "Elaboration order" is more precisely defined in Java than in Ada.  In
> Ada one often has to use elaboration pragmas to avoid
> access-before-elaboration exceptions or uninitialized variables.  The Java
> analog to Ada's package elaboration is the initialization phase of dynamic
> class loading.  When a class is initialized is defined by the language
> rules.

You've gotta be kidding!
Well maybe Java elaboration order is well specified,
but neither the language or the compiler offer any help.
One has to very careful to to avoid initialisation problems
in Java programs.
(Speaking as one burnt by this problem).

Cheers
Geoff