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Android Build an Interactive Story App (Retired) The Model-View-Controller Pattern Adding Custom Constructors

Damian Adams
Damian Adams
21,351 Points
Posted by Damian Adams
Damian Adams
21,351 Points

Why did we initialize the Choice fields to null in our custom Page constructor?

Near the end of the video Ben Jakuben goes on ahead to create a custom constructor to cover the last two Page initializations (5 and 6) of our Page array in our Story class. However, when we go on ahead to create this custom constructor, we initialize the two Choice variables to null:

public Page(int imageId, String text) {
        mImageId = imageId;
        mText = text;
        mChoice1 = null;
        mChoice2 = null;
        mIsFinal = true;
    }

Why is this necessary? I thought by default all objects/reference types are initialized to null values? See here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16699593/uninitialized-object-vs-object-initialized-to-null

Is this not unnecessary code? Would it make any difference to leave them "uninitialized"? Should they not posses the same null values?

Thanks in advance.