Null pointer dereferencing occurs when a variable bound to the null value is treated as if it were a valid object reference and used without checking its state. Dereferencing a null pointer results in pointer causes a NullPointerException to be thrown, which interrupts execution of the program or thread. Code conforming to this coding standard will consequently terminate, because ERR08-J. Do not catch NullPointerException or any of its ancestors requires that NullPointerException is not caught. Consequently, code must never dereference null pointers.
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