Thread: Word Guess program with a Null Pointer Exception

Hello,

I keep receiving the Null Pointer Exception error in my code and I am not sure how to fix it. The program I am working on is a Word Guess program that is kind of like jeopardy. I am coding this in Eclipse, by the way.

public class WordGuess 
{
	//global variables
	static Scanner myScanner;
	static Scanner datScanner;
	static File inFile;
	static String[] words = new String[10];
	static String guessWord;
	static String dashWord;
	static String numCtr;
	static String guess;
 
     public static void input()
	{
		int i = 0;
		int guessCtr = 15;
		dashWord = guessWord;
		dashWord.replaceAll("[A-Z]", "-"); //this is where I get the error
 
		System.out.println("Guesses left: " + guessCtr + "    " + dashWord);
 
		System.out.print("Enter letter: ");
		guess = myScanner.next();
 
		guessValid();
 
 
			for(i = 0; i < guessWord.length() && guessCtr > 0; i++)
			{
				if(guessValid())
				{
					if(guessWord.substring(i, i + 1).equals(guess))
					{
						guess.replace(dashWord.substring(i, i + 1), guess);
					}
					else
					{
						guessCtr--;
					}
 
					System.out.println("Guesses left: " + guessCtr + "    " + guessWord);
 
					System.out.print("Enter letter: ");
					guess = myScanner.next();
 
				}
			}
 
			System.out.println("Sorry, you fail!");
	}

Yes, I know that it points to a null value, but I cannot figure out why dashWord would have a null value.