Declaring a Variable to Refer to an Object
Previously, you learned that to declare a variable, you write:
type name; This notifies the compiler that you will use name to refer
to data whose type is type. With a primitive variable, this
declaration also reserves the proper amount of memory for the
variable.
You can also declare a reference variable on its own line. For
example:
Point originOne; If you declare originOne like this, its value will be
undetermined until an object is actually created and assigned to it.
Simply declaring a reference variable does not create an object. For
that, you need to use the new operator, as described in the next
section. You must assign an object to originOne before you use it in
your code. Otherwise, you will get a compiler error.
A variable in this state, which currently references no object, can be
illustrated as follows (the variable name, originOne, plus a reference
pointing to nothing):