Using int vs Integer

Question

I came across a class using Integer variables to capture size to be used in a for loop. Is this good practice or should we use the int primitive data type?

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Answer 1

This approach is not good in practice, use int whenever possible. Usage of Integer indicates that this particular variable can be null (or it was inside a collection, damn generics...) - which is not the case.

Also using Integer introduces an extra overhead of boxing and unboxing.