Why not a NullPointerException while accessing static with null reference? [duplicate]

Question

Here in following code we are getting value of i on a null reference, though a NPE is not there.

public class Test {
    static int i = 10;

    Test getTest() {
        return null;    
    }

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        Test t = new Test();
        System.out.println(t.getTest());  
        System.out.println(t.getTest().i);
    }
}

output

null
10

Answer 1

Informally speaking, you can think of this

System.out.println(t.getTest().i);

as being equivalent to

System.out.println(Test.i);

because i is static.

This is the simplest answer probably.

Strictly speaking, they are not equivalent. Actually
getTest() is called but its return value is not used
for accessing the i field as this test below shows.

public class Test {
    static int i = 10;

    Test getTest() {
        System.out.println("Method getTest() called!");
        return null;    
    }

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        Test t = new Test();
        System.out.println(t.getTest());  
        System.out.println(t.getTest().i);
    }
}