Methodology Question: Initializing Static Arrays

Question

After almost gnawing my arm off in frustration, I finally stumbled onto how to go about initializing and populating a static array that's outside of my Class's constructor (by placing it inside of a static block). My problem is, I just don't understand why I needed to do it that way. My code started out as such:
public class Parameter {
     private static appEnvironmentBean[] appEnvironment = new appEnvironmentBean[8];
     appEnvironment[0].setMachineIP("192.168.1.100")
}and this kept throwing an error " ']' expected at line ###"
so I changed it to this:
public class Parameter {
     private static appEnvironmentBean[] appEnvironment = new appEnvironmentBean[8];
     static {
     appEnvironment[0].setMachineIP("192.168.1.100")
}and it worked. Now my problem is, I'm assigning a literal, and I declared the Bean array as static, so the way I see it, there was no reason to throw assignments to the array inside of a static block. I'll take it as a "That's just the way it is" thing, but if someone out there could explain the reasoning behind having to put my assignments inside of a static block, it would really be appreciated.
Thanks!

Answer 1

Because if you didn't put it inside a static block you'd be attempting to execute code outside of a method which is illegal except for initialization.
I think you could do it this way:
private static appEnvironmentBean[] appEnvironment = {
  new appEnvironmentBean().setMachineIP("192.168.1.100"),
  new appEnvironmentBean().setMachineIP("192.168.1.100"),
  new appEnvironmentBean().setMachineIP("192.168.1.100"),
  new appEnvironmentBean().setMachineIP("192.168.1.100"),
  new appEnvironmentBean().setMachineIP("192.168.1.100"),
  new appEnvironmentBean().setMachineIP("192.168.1.100"),
  new appEnvironmentBean().setMachineIP("192.168.1.100"),
  new appEnvironmentBean().setMachineIP("192.168.1.100") };it depends on whether setMachineIP returns an appEnvironmentBean.