Basic Java Programming Question. int's and null?

Question

I feel kind of stupid asking this basic of a question but here it goes...

so i have an instance variable private int currentElement;
and it's changed many time through the program let's say to 0 then 1 then 2. Now I need to change the currentElement to "undefined" however when i try and declare it as null. Is this because it is a primitive type so I can't declare it as null after initializing the variable?

Answer 1

an object can be a null,
but a primitive can be zero

Convert currentElement to integer object
then you can do whatever you want.