Java short circuit evaluation

Question

I thought Java had short circuit evaluation, yet this line is still throwing a null pointer exception:

if( (perfectAgent != null) && (perfectAgent.ge         


        

Answer 1

You ensure that perfectAgent is not null, so one or more of perfectAgent.getAddress() or entry or entry.getKey() must be null. Or getAddress() or getKey() are hitting an NPE in their implementation.

To debug this sort of thing, look first at the stack trace to pin down the location. This would tell you if it's happening in getAddress() or in getKey() or in the pasted code snippet that calls them. Next, if it's in this snippet, add some code before the if to test which is null. You can use good old System.err.println() or assertions. (If you use assertions, be sure to enable them with the java command's -enableassertions flag.)

Update: So my interpretation turned out to be wrong ... the problem presented two contradictory facts (there was an NPE on this line and yet the short-circuit should have happened) and I automatically assumed the first fact was true and the second false when in fact it was a different problem entirely due to turning off the auto-build in Eclipse. Duh! In debugging something "impossible" it helps to be radically skeptical.