What does a variable of a primitive type contain?

A good answer might be:

A variable of a primitive type contains the actual data, not information on where the data is.

Here is the example program again:

class egString
{

  public static void main ( String[] args )
  {
    String str;
    
    str = new String( "The Gingham Dog" );

    System.out.println( str );
  }
}

When the line

    System.out.println( str );

is executed (when the program is running), the information stored in str is used to go to the object and get the data to be printed.

QUESTION 6:

Does using str in the above statement change the information in it?