Hi,

I originally had some code (for doing an LDAP search using ldapjdk.jar)
that looked something like:

while (results.hasMoreElements())
    {
    LDAPEntry findEntry = null;
    try
        {
        findEntry = results.next();
        LDAPAttribute attribute = findEntry.getAttribute("cn");
        Enumeration enumValues = attribute.getStringValues();
        String commonName = (String)enumValues.nextElement();
        System.out.println("Common name: " + commonName);
        }
        catch (LDAPReferralException e)
        .
        .

The above code seemed to work ok, but then I wanted to have access to
the commonName outside of the try (for some println's, etc.), so I
changed it to:

String commonName = "";
.
.
while (results.hasMoreElements())
    {
    LDAPEntry findEntry = null;
    try
        {
        findEntry = results.next();
        LDAPAttribute attribute = findEntry.getAttribute("cn");
        Enumeration enumValues = attribute.getStringValues();
        commonName = (String)enumValues.nextElement();
        System.out.println("Common name: " + commonName);
        }
        catch (LDAPReferralException e)
        .
        .
       
But, when I did that, I started getting a NullExceptionPointer error, I
believe on the line where commonName was being assigned.

Can anyone explain why?

I eventually was able to get this working by changing commonName to a
StringBuffer, but I'm still puzzled by the problem, especially since the
nextElement() method seems to only throw a NoSuchElement (and not a
NullPointerException :(...

Thanks,
Jim