Order of class initialization during java deserialization

Question

During deserialization, are subclasses guaranteed to be initialized before any class instance objects are restored from the input stream? Specifically, I have a subclass with static fields that I'd like to access in the superclass readObject() method. Can I count on the subclass static fields being valid?

Answer 1

I am not an expert on BNF, but the protocol spec for serialization

classDescInfo:
  classDescFlags fields classAnnotation superClassDesc 

shows that superclass information comes after class information. So it looks like you can rely on your subclass static fields.