How to Solve the Int Cannot Be Dereferenced Error in Java

1. Dereferencing in Java
2. Cause of int cannot be dereferenced in Java
3. Solve the int cannot be dereferenced Error in Java

In this article, we’ll discuss the cause of the Java int cannot be dereferenced exception and how to fix it. First, have a look at what dereferencing in Java is.

Dereferencing in Java

Primitive and object variables are the two types of variables that can be used in Java. However, only object variables can be reference types. The int data type is a primitive rather than an object.

Accessing the value that is pointed to by a reference is what’s known as dereferencing. It is impossible to dereference int because it is already a value and is not a reference to anything else.

Cause of int cannot be dereferenced in Java

1. A reference in Java is an address that points to a specific object or variable. The term dereferencing refers to obtaining an object’s properties through a reference.
2. If you try to perform any dereferencing on a primitive, like the below example, you will receive the error Z cannot be dereferenced, where Z is a type considered primitive.
3. The cause for this is that primitives are not the same thing as objects; instead, they are raw value representations.

Solve the int cannot be dereferenced Error in Java

Let’s understand int cannot be dereferenced and figure out how to fix it with the help of the example below:

Example:

public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    int Z = 8;
    System.out.println(Z.equals(8));
  }
}

Firstly, we created the Main class and compared an int to a value chosen at random. Z is one of Java’s eight fundamental data types, including int, byte, short, etc.

We will see the following error when we attempt to compile the code:

Main.java:5: error: int cannot be dereferenced
System.out.println(Z.equals(8));
                    ^
1 error

In our case, we need to determine whether or not the two values are equal. Solving our issue is to utilize the notation == rather than the equals() function for primitive types:

public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    int Z = 8;
    System.out.println(Z == 8);
  }
}

The following output will be printed when we compile the code:

true