## Why is this an issue?

A `NullPointerException` should indicate that a `null` value was unexpectedly encountered. Good programming practice dictates that code is structured to avoid NPE’s.

Explicitly throwing `NullPointerException` forces a method’s callers to explicitly catch it, rather than coding to avoid it. Further, it makes it difficult to distinguish between the unexpectedly-encountered `null` value and the condition which causes the method to purposely throw an NPE.

If an NPE is being thrown to indicate that a parameter to the method should not have been null, use the `@NotNull` annotation instead.

### Noncompliant code example

    public void doSomething (String aString) throws NullPointerException {
         throw new NullPointerException();
    }

### Compliant solution

    public void doSomething (@NotNull String aString) {
    }