In Java, why have a code block with no keywords, just curly brackets

Question

I\'m re-factoring some inherited code, but was stumped by the design decision and can\'t figure out the proper terms to google this. My predecessor would use blocks like thi

Answer 1

It's called an initializer block.

Initializer blocks for instance variables look just like static initializer blocks, but without the static keyword:

    {
        // whatever code is needed for initialization goes here
    }

The Java compiler copies initializer blocks into every constructor. Therefore, this approach can be used to share a block of code between multiple constructors.