Changing variable name breaks serialization

Question

I have a class like so
class aClass {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1; 
    private ArrayList list = new ArrayList();
    private void readObject(ObjectInputStream in)throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException {
     in.defaultReadObject();
        this.list = new ArrayList(this.list);     //defensive copy
}The problem is i renamed 'list' to 'newList'. Now the deserialization fails. Is there any way around this? Its still a list and everything is the same but the name. I thought serialization used the positions of variables not their names? And I also thought since I had my UID the same it would just load it without complaint?
I have a bunch of files created with this in them, and I need a tip on how to convert them. thanks!

Answer 1

easy peasy
class aClass {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1; 
    private ArrayList list = new ArrayList();
    private void readObject(ObjectInputStream in)throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException {
     this.list = (ArrayList) in.readObject();  //<---new
        this.list = new ArrayList(this.list);     //defensive copy