Primitive Data and Definite Loops - Building Java Programs: A Back to Basics Approach - page 66

character by character. Each such character is of type char . A character literal is
enclosed in single quotation marks and includes just one character:

'a' 'm' 'X' '!' '3' '\\'

All of these examples are of type char . Notice that the last example uses an
escape sequence to represent the backslash character. You can even refer to the single
quotation character using an escape sequence:

'\''

Finally, the primitive type boolean stores logical information. We won't be
exploring the use of type boolean until we reach Chapter 4 and see how to introduce
logical tests into our programs, but for completeness, we include the boolean literal
values here. Logic deals with just two possibilities: true and false. These two Java
keywords are the two literal values of type boolean :

true false

Arithmetic Operators
The basic arithmetic operators are shown in Table 2.2. The addition and subtraction
operators will, of course, look familiar to you, as should the asterisk as a multiplication
operator and the forward slash as a division operator. However, as you'll see, Java has
two different division operations. The remainder or mod operation may be unfamiliar.
Division presents a problem when the operands are integers. When you divide 119
by 5, for example, you do not get an integer result. Therefore, the results of integer
division are expressed as two different integers, a quotient and a remainder:

119
5

23 1 quotient 2 with 4 1 remainder 2

In terms of the arithmetic operators:

119 / 5 evaluates to 23
119 % 5 evaluates to 4

Table 2.2 Arithmetic Operators in Java

Operator Meaning Example Result

addition

+ 2 + 2 4

subtraction

- 53 - 18 35

multiplication

* 3 * 8 24

division

/ 4.8 / 2.0 2.4

remainder or mod

% 19 % 5 4