Why not a NullPointerException while accessing sta

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• Static fields on a null reference in Java 5 answers
• How come invoking a (static) method on a null reference doesn't throw NullPointerException? 5 answers

Here in following code we are getting value of i on a null reference, though a NPE is not there.

public class Test {
    static int i = 10;

    Test getTest() {
        return null;    
    }

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

output

null
10

Answer 1

 Test t = new Test(); // initialize t

Here t isn't null as it has been initialized. Thus, you do not get a NullPointerException.

In next case where you expected a NullPointerException since t.getTest() returned null,

t.getTest().i;

i is a static variable and you do not need to an instance to access static variables, you can just access them directly. Thus, you do not get NullPointerException here too.

And moreover,

System.out.println(i); // is an another way to access static i

Answer 2

i being a static variable, no instance is needed to get its value.