Java Reference
In-Depth Information
You can also assign an
int
literal to a
char
variable if
int
literal falls in the range 0-65535. When you assign an
int
literal to a
char
variable, the
char
variable represents the character whose Unicode code is equal to the value
represented by that
int
literal. The Unicode code for the character
'a'
(lowercase A) is 97. The decimal value 97 is
represented as 141 in octal and 61 in hexadecimal. You can represent the Unicode character
'a'
in three different
forms in Java:
'a'
,
'\141'
, and
'\u0061'
. You can also use
int
literal 97 to represent the Unicode character
'a'
.
char c1 = 97; // Same as c1 = 'a'; c1 = '\141'; or, c1 = '\u0061';
A
byte
variable takes 8 bits and a
char
variable takes 16 bits. Even if the
byte
data type has smaller range than
the
char
data type, you cannot assign a value stored in a
byte
variable to a
char
variable. The reason is that
byte
is a
signed data type whereas
char
is an unsigned data type. If the
byte
variable has a negative value, say -15, it cannot be
stored in a
char
variable without losing the precision. In such a case, you need to use an explicit cast. The following
snippet of code illustrates possible cases of assignments from
char
to other integral data type and vice versa:
byte b1 = 10;
short s1 = 15;
int num1 = 150;
long num2 = 20L;
char c1 = 'A';
// byte and char
b1 = c1; // An error
b1 = (byte)c1; // Ok
c1 = b1; // An error
c1 = (char)b1; // Ok
// short and char
s1 = c1; // An error
s1 = (short)c1; // Ok
c1 = s1; // An error
c1 = (char)s1; // Ok
// int and char
num1 = c1; // Ok
num1 = (int)c1; // Ok. But, cast is not required. Use num1 = c1
c1 = num1; // An error
c1 = (char)num1; // Ok
c1 = 255; // Ok. 255 is in the range of 0-65535
c1 = 70000; // An error. 70000 is out of range 0-65535
c1 = (char)70000; // Ok. But, will lose the original value
// long and char
num2 = c1; // Ok
num2 = (long)c1; // Ok. But, cast is not required. Use num2 = c1
c1 = num2; // An error
c1 = (char)num2; // Ok
c1 = 255L; // An error. 255L is a long literal
c1 = (char)255L; // Ok. But use c1 = 255 instead
