#1384 NullPointerException in ConsecutiveLiteralAppendsRule

[Patrick McEvoy]

I updated from 5.3.2 to 5.3.3 and now I get this NullPointerException.

Exception applying rule ConsecutiveLiteralAppends on file <snip path="">\CatalogHandler.java, continuing with next rule
java.lang.NullPointerException
at net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.rule.strings.ConsecutiveLiteralAppendsRule.checkInitializerExpressions(Consecut
iveLiteralAppendsRule.java:195)
at net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.rule.strings.ConsecutiveLiteralAppendsRule.visit(ConsecutiveLiteralAppendsRule.
java:93)

[Patrick McEvoy]

It happens when the StringBuilder is declared as a member variable but not instantiated until the constructor.

Example to reproduce the problem.
public class ConsecutiveLiteralAppendsRuleTest {
private StringBuilder cdata;
}

[Toby Willcock]

The following produces the same NullPointerException in 5.3.3 too:

public class ConsecutiveLiteralAppendsRuleTest {
    public void appendChar(final StringBuilder s) {
        // do nothing
    }
}

[Andreas Dangel]

Thanks!
This will be fixed with PMD 5.3.4.

Commit: https://github.com/pmd/pmd/commit/89a3d5dd1e58355b0f96360ebba80882634c680e

[Juan Sotuyo]

Awesome! Any schedule for 5.3.4 / 5.4.0?

[Andreas Dangel]

I release 5.3.4 this weekend and plan to release 5.4.0 in two weeks or so...