redundant field initializers

[Jeroen Frijters]

Hi,

Do we have a coding style guideline about redundant field initializers?
I have a patch that removes a couple of these for static fields that
needlessly result in a static initializer method.

For example in javax.naming.spi.NamingManager:

-  private static InitialContextFactoryBuilder icfb = null;
+  private static InitialContextFactoryBuilder icfb;
 
   // Package private so DirectoryManager can access it.
-  static ObjectFactoryBuilder ofb = null;
+  static ObjectFactoryBuilder ofb;

Making this change removes the need for the compiler to create a static
initializer.

Does everyone agree that this is a good idea? If so, how far should we
take this? How about this change:

Index: java/awt/EventDispatchThread.java
===================================================================
RCS file:
/cvsroot/classpath/classpath/java/awt/EventDispatchThread.java,v
retrieving revision 1.4
diff -u -r1.4 EventDispatchThread.java
--- java/awt/EventDispatchThread.java   31 May 2004 21:11:46 -0000
1.4
+++ java/awt/EventDispatchThread.java   19 Sep 2004 09:52:47 -0000
@@ -42,14 +42,14 @@
 
 class EventDispatchThread extends Thread
 {
-  private static int dispatchThreadNum = 1;
+  private static int dispatchThreadNum;
 
   private EventQueue queue;
 
   EventDispatchThread(EventQueue queue)
   {
     super();
-    setName("AWT-EventQueue-" + dispatchThreadNum++);
+    setName("AWT-EventQueue-" + ++dispatchThreadNum);
     this.queue = queue;
     setPriority(NORM_PRIORITY + 1);
     start();

Regards,
Jeroen