Null是一个特殊值，它不是任何东西的实例。很明显，它不能是任何东西的实例。

Java中的Null (tm)

在C和c++中，"NULL"是头文件中定义的常量，其值如下:

    0

or:

    0L

or:

    ((void*)0)

取决于编译器和内存模型选项。严格地说，NULL不是C/ c++本身的一部分。

在Java(tm)中，“null”不是关键字，而是null类型的特殊文字。它可以强制转换为任何引用类型，但不能转换为任何基本类型，如int或boolean。null字面量的值不一定是0。并且不可能强制转换为null类型或声明该类型的变量。

Null是一个特殊值，它不是任何类的实例。下面的程序说明了这一点:

public class X {
   void f(Object o)
   { 
      System.out.println(o instanceof String);   // Output is "false"
   }
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      new X().f(null);
   }
}

Null不是任何类的实例。

然而，你可以将null赋值给任何类型的变量(对象或数组):

 // this is false   
 boolean nope = (null instanceof String);

 // but you can still use it as a String
 String x = null;
 "abc".startsWith(null);

Java中有两大类类型:基本类型和引用类型。声明为基元类型的变量存储值;声明为引用类型的变量存储引用。

String x = null;

在本例中，初始化语句声明了一个变量“x”。" x "存储字符串引用。这里是空的。首先，null不是一个有效的对象实例，因此没有为它分配内存。它只是一个值，指示对象引用当前没有引用对象。

An interesting way to see null in java in my opinion is to see it as something that DOES NOT denote an absence of information but simply as a literal value that can be assigned to a reference of any type. If you think about it if it denoted absence of information then for a1==a2 to be true doesn't make sense (in case they were both assigned a value of null) as they could really could be pointing to ANY object (we simply don't know what objects they should be pointing to)... By the way null == null returns true in java. If java e.g. would be like SQL:1999 then null==null would return unknown (a boolean value in SQL:1999 can take three values : true,false and unknown but in practise unknown is implemented as null in real systems)... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL