How to avoid null checking in Java?

Question

I use object != null a lot to avoid NullPointerException.

Is there a good alternative to this?

For example I often use:

Answer 1

Only for this situation -

Not checking if a variable is null before invoking an equals method (a string compare example below):

if ( foo.equals("bar") ) {
 // ...
}

will result in a NullPointerException if foo doesn't exist.

You can avoid that if you compare your Strings like this:

if ( "bar".equals(foo) ) {
 // ...
}