What is autoboxing in Java?

Autoboxing is the automatic conversion of primitive data types to their corresponding wrapper classes by the Java compiler.

For example:

Integer i = 10; // Autoboxing of int (primitive) to Integer (object)

Unboxing is the reverse process, automatically extracting the primitive value from a wrapper class object.

For example:

int j = new Integer(5); // Unboxing of Integer (object) to int (primitive)

It is used for convenience when working with collections (e.g., ArrayList<Integer>) or in situations where an object wrapper for a primitive is required. It can lead to a "NullPointerException" during unboxing if the wrapper object is null. It may also slightly affect performance due to object creation.