why null pointer exception?

[kshitij kaushik]

guys I was going through Head First Java's sharpen your pencil exercise...on compiling the code below,
I am getting Null Pointer Exception error during run time...why it is so?

public class TestBox {
     Integer i;
     int j;

     public void go() {
     j=i;
     System.out.println(j);
     System.out.println(i);
     }
  
     public static void main(String[] args) {
            TestBox t=new TestBox();
            t.go();
     }
}

although on initiating "i"...it is running properly. For example

public class TestBox {
     Integer i=2;
     int j;

     
  
     public static void main(String[] args) {
            TestBox t=new TestBox();
            t.go();
     }

     public void go() {
     j=i;
     System.out.println(j);
     System.out.println(i);
     }
}

while doing the same for "j"...still null pointer exception...this whole stuff of auto boxing is not clear to me....please tell me...

[Sagar Rohankar]

kshitij kaushik wrote:
although on initiating "i"...it is running properly. For example

public class TestBox {
     Integer i=2;
     int j;

     
  
     public static void main(String[] args) {
            TestBox t=new TestBox();
            t.go();
     }

     public void go() {
     j=i;
     System.out.println(j);
     System.out.println(i);
     }
}

while doing the same for "j"...still null pointer exception...this whole stuff of auto boxing is not clear to me....please tell me...

So you figured out the problem your self.

Instance variables, if not initialized, gets 'null' object (OR get default value in case of primitive data type).. And you cant perform any operation on "null" object, so NPE.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Quite right: you are trying to get the value out of the null Integer field. You are actually trying to un-box the null value.

There are however a few things you can do with a null value:

You can assign it, so it isn't null any more.

You can assign null to another identifier, so it does now point to null.

You can test for equality and inequality, eg "if (field == null) . . ." "if (field2 != null) . . ."

[fred rosenberger]

i think it's the j=i line that would throw the exception. since j is an int, it only holds a value, not an object. so, when you try to assign i to j, you are basically doing this:

j = i.intValue();

but since i is null, you get your NPE.

[kshitij kaushik]

thanks sagar you helped me to find out mine mistake.....
thanks campbell you have given me a great source of information......
thanks fred you have pointed very correctly....I checked by changing both the instance variable type to "Integer"
and "int" as well......now it is not giving any run time exception.....instead of that its giving as expected "null" and "0" as output...
once again thanks a lot to all of you guys........

[Campbell Ritchie]

You're welcome

[Sami Devine]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:Quite right: you are trying to get the value out of the null Integer field. You are actually trying to un-box the null value.

There are however a few things you can do with a null value:

You can assign it, so it isn't null any more.

You can assign null to another identifier, so it does now point to null.

You can test for equality and inequality, eg "if (field == null) . . ." "if (field2 != null) . . ."

Hi Campbell,
I tried out the same excercise.

What do you mean by "You can assign null to another identifier, so it does now point to null"?

[Rob Spoor]

String s = null;

[Campbell Ritchie]

Rob Spoor wrote:String s = null;

. . . or

String s = null;
String ss = s;

. . . or

private String s; // Fields default to null
String ss = s;

All those will set both s and ss to null. It shows how easily nulls can propagate through your code

[Sami Devine]

Thanks Campbell, Rob.
I tried a few things. I tried the following and got NPE. Shouldn't this work for Integer also as it is an object?

public class Testbox{
Integer k;
Integer i=k;
int j;
public static void main (String[] args) {
Testbox t = new Testbox() ;
t.go() ;
}
public void go() {
j=i;
System.out.println(j);
System.out.println(i);
}
}

[Sami Devine]

Please tell me what is wrong with my code tags. Isnt it codebutton-code-codebutton?

[Jesper de Jong]

You're probably double-clicking the code button, so that your text looks like:

[code][/code]
.... some code here ....
[code][/code]

Intead, you should just click the code button once to add a "code open" tag [code] and at the end click it once again to add a "code close" tag [/code].

Note: you can also manually type in the [code] and [/code] tags instead of using the button.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Jesper de Jong wrote:You're probably double-clicking the code button, so that your text looks like:

[ code][ /code]
.... some code here ....
[ code][ /code] . . . .

Yes, it does look like that, so I went and corrected it. Unfortunately the code wasn't indented, so the code tags didn't do very much.

It is actually confusing that there isn't an obvious space between the start and end code tags.

[Rob Spoor]

k is never assigned a value so it remains null.
i only gets one assignment, but it's with the value of k which is null.
The assignment to j tries to auto-unbox i, but that's still null. That's why you're getting an NPE.