Should I instantiate instance variables on declaration or in the constructor?

Question

Is there any advantage for either approach?

Example 1:

class A {
    B b = new B();
}

Example 2:

class A {
    B b;         


        

Answer 1

I got burned in an interesting way today:

class MyClass extends FooClass {
    String a = null;

    public MyClass() {
        super();     // Superclass calls init();
    }

    @Override
    protected void init() {
        super.init();
        if (something)
            a = getStringYadaYada();
    }
}

See the mistake? It turns out that the a = null initializer gets called after the superclass constructor is called. Since the superclass constructor calls init(), the initialization of a is followed by the a = null initialization.