When should null values of Boolean be used?

Use boolean rather than Boolean every time you can. This will avoid many NullPointerExceptions and make your code more robust.

Boolean is useful, for example

• to store booleans in a collection (List, Map, etc.)
• to represent a nullable boolean (coming from a nullable boolean column in a database, for example). The null value might mean "we don't know if it's true or false" in this context.
• each time a method needs an Object as argument, and you need to pass a boolean value. For example, when using reflection or methods like MessageFormat.format().

There are three quick reasons:

• to represent Database boolean values, which may be true, false or null
• to represent XML Schema's xsd:boolean values declared with xsd:nillable="true"
• to be able to use generic types: List<Boolean> - you can't use List<boolean>

I almost never use Boolean because its semantics are vague and obscure. Basically you have 3-state logic: true, false or unknown. Sometimes it is useful to use it when e.g. you gave user a choice between two values and the user didn't answer at all and you really want to know that information (think: NULLable database column).

I see no reason to convert from boolean to Boolean as it introduces extra memory overhead, NPE possibility and less typing. Typically I use awkward BooleanUtils.isTrue() to make my life a little bit easier with Boolean.

The only reason for the existence of Boolean is the ability to have collections of Boolean type (generics do not allow boolean, as well as all other primitives).

Wow, what on earth? Is it just me or are all these answers wrong or at least misleading?

The Boolean class is a wrapper around the boolean primitive type. The use of this wrapper is to be able to pass a boolean in a method that accepts an object or generic. Ie vector.

A Boolean object can NEVER have a value of null. If your reference to a Boolean is null, it simply means that your Boolean was never created.

You might find this useful: http://grepcode.com/file/repository.grepcode.com/java/root/jdk/openjdk/6-b14/java/lang/Boolean.java

A null Boolean reference should only be used to trigger similar logic to which you have any other null reference. Using it for three state logic is clumsy.

EDIT: notice, that Boolean a = true; is a misleading statement. This really equals something closer to Boolean a = new Boolean(true); Please see autoboxing here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_%28computer_science%29#Autoboxing

Perhaps this is where much of the confusion comes from.

EDIT2: Please read comments below. If anyone has an idea of how to restructure my answer to incorporate this, please do so.