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In object-oriented computer programming, a null object is an object with no referenced value or with defined neutral (null) behavior.The null object design pattern, which describes the uses of such objects and their behavior (or lack thereof), was first published as "Void Value" [1] and later in the Pattern Languages of Program Design book series as "Null Object".
Programming languages use different literals for the null pointer. In Python, for example, a null value is called None. In Java and C#, the literal null is provided as a literal for reference types. In Pascal and Swift, a null pointer is called nil. In Eiffel, it is called a void reference.
Nullable types are a feature of some programming languages which allow a value to be set to the special value NULL instead of the usual possible values of the data type.In statically typed languages, a nullable type is an option type, [citation needed] while in dynamically typed languages (where values have types, but variables do not), equivalent behavior is provided by having a single null ...
The language does not provide any explicit pointer manipulation operators. It is still possible for code to attempt to dereference a null reference (null pointer), however, which results in a run-time exception being thrown. The space occupied by unreferenced memory objects is recovered automatically by garbage collection at run-time. [20]
Unlike static_cast and C-style typecast (where type check occurs while compiling), a type safety check is performed at runtime. If the types are not compatible, an exception will be thrown (when dealing with references ) or a null pointer will be returned (when dealing with pointers ).
In object-oriented programming, the safe navigation operator (also known as optional chaining operator, safe call operator, null-conditional operator, null-propagation operator) is a binary operator that returns null if its first argument is null; otherwise it performs a dereferencing operation as specified by the second argument (typically an ...
Java does not have uninitialized variables. Fields of classes and objects that do not have an explicit initializer and elements of arrays are automatically initialized with the default value for their type (false for boolean, 0 for all numerical types, null for all reference types). [4]
To expose dangling pointer errors, one common programming technique is to set pointers to the null pointer or to an invalid address once the storage they point to has been released. When the null pointer is dereferenced (in most languages) the program will immediately terminate—there is no potential for data corruption or unpredictable behavior.