AutoBoxing Integer to int conversion

[Praveen Palaniswamy]

int a = (Integer) null;

throws a null pointer exception. Is this documented in javadoc? also if any one could point out why is it not assigned 0 which will be the default for an int.

[Wouter Oet]

Hi and welcome to the Javaranch.

What happens is that you have an Integer reference with you want to convert into an int value. This happens by calling the intValue() method on the Integer reference.
But because the Integer reference is null it results in a NullPointerException.

[Campbell Ritchie]

It's in the Java™ Language Specification . Look what it says about null on that page.

[Jesper de Jong]

To show in code what Wouter explained, your line of code is the same as this:

Integer x = null;
int a = x.intValue();  // NullPointerException because x is null