I'm trying to return an array but got 'null pointer exception'. I suppose it's because my method returns an array with elements that are null. How to properly return an empty array?

In main class main method:

public class Test{
public static void main(String[] args){
    int s = 0;
    Project arr[] = new Project[3];
    for(int i = 0; i!=3; i++){

        Project var = Project.getProject(arr, "Programming");
        if (var == null){
            var = new Project();
            var.setName("Programming");
            arr[s]= var;
            s=s+1;
        }
    }
}
}

Method in separate class:

static Project getProject(Project[] a, String n) {
    for (int i = 0; i != a.length; i++)
    {
        if(a[i].getName().equals(n))
            return a[i];
    }
    return null;
}

Exeption:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
at Project.getProject(Project.java:12)
at Test.main(Test.java:7)