static is a keyword and means ‘ can be accessed without the help of an object ‘.

static is used an access modifier with members ( variables and methods ) of class. A static member belongs to the whole class. That is, all the objects of the class share ( or access ) the same static variable. Or to say, a static variable is common to all the objects of the class. static variables do not have “this” reference. ‘ this ‘ is a keyword used to refer to a particular current object. This is quite contrast with instance variables where each variable keeps a separate copy of data when called with an object. The static variables like instance variables are given default values ( like zero for int ), if not assiganed any values.

Declaring static members :

static int count ;

static int min( int a, int b)

{

//body

}

Example :

public class StaticDemo {
static int salary = 5000;
public static void display()
{
System.out.println(“Hello”);
}
public static void main(String args[])
{
System.out.println(salary);

//called directly without object
StaticDemo sd= new StaticDemo();

//called with object
System.out.println(sd.salary);

//called with class name
System.out.println(StaticDemo.salary);

//all the below display calls prints Hello

display();
sd.display();
StaticDemo.display();
}
}

Output :

double d =10.5 ;
int x=d;
int y=(int)d ;
System.out.println(y);

In the above, casting is done explicitly by us as we are assigning d of datatype double ( 8 bytes ) to x of datatype int ( 4 bytes ).