Question

I have this below lines of code

String name = null;
if (something)
    name = someString;
if (name != null && name.equals("XYZ"))
    doSomethingWith ("hello");

Will the above if condition result in NullPointerException , if “something” is false ?
if not why not ?

Answer 1

No, it won’t. The && operator in Java is a short-circuit one so, if name is null, then name.equals() will not be executed (since false && anything is still false).

Same with || by the way: if the left hand side evaluates to true, the right hand side is not checked.