[java] Java's L number (long) specification

It appears that when you type in a number in Java, the compiler automatically reads it as an integer, which is why when you type in (long) 6000000000 (not in integer's range) it will complain that 6000000000 is not an integer. To correct this, I had to specify 6000000000L. I just learned about this specification.

Are there other number specifications like for short, byte, float, double? It seems like these would be good to have because (I assume) if you could specify the number you're typing in is a short then java wouldn't have to cast it - that is an assumption, correct me if I'm wrong. I would normally search this question myself, but I don't know what this kind of number specification is even called.

It seems like these would be good to have because (I assume) if you could specify the number you're typing in is a short then java wouldn't have to cast it

Since the parsing of literals happens at compile time, this is absolutely irrelevant in regard to performance. The only reason having short and byte suffixes would be nice is that it lead to more compact code.

These are literals and are described in section 3.10 of the Java language spec.

By default any integral primitive data type (byte, short, int, long) will be treated as int type by java compiler. For byte and short, as long as value assigned to them is in their range, there is no problem and no suffix required. If value assigned to byte and short exceeds their range, explicit type casting is required.

Ex:

byte b = 130; // CE: range is exceeding.

to overcome this perform type casting.

byte b = (byte)130; //valid, but chances of losing data is there.

In case of long data type, it can accept the integer value without any hassle. Suppose we assign like

Long l = 2147483647; //which is max value of int

in this case no suffix like L/l is required. By default value 2147483647 is considered by java compiler is int type. Internal type casting is done by compiler and int is auto promoted to Long type.

Long l = 2147483648; //CE: value is treated as int but out of range 

Here we need to put suffix as L to treat the literal 2147483648 as long type by java compiler.

so finally

Long l = 2147483648L;// works fine.

To understand why it is necessary to distinguish between int and long literals, consider:

long l = -1 >>> 1;

versus

int a = -1;
long l = a >>> 1;

Now as you would rightly expect, both code fragments give the same value to variable l. Without being able to distinguish int and long literals, what is the interpretation of -1 >>> 1?

-1L >>> 1 // ?

or

(int)-1 >>> 1 // ?

So even if the number is in the common range, we need to specify type. If the default changed with magnitude of the literal, then there would be a weird change in the interpretations of expressions just from changing the digits.

This does not occur for byte, short and char because they are always promoted before performing arithmetic and bitwise operations. Arguably their should be integer type suffixes for use in, say, array initialisation expressions, but there isn't. float uses suffix f and double d. Other literals have unambiguous types, with there being a special type for null.

I hope you won't mind a slight tangent, but thought you may be interested to know that besides F (for float), D (for double), and L (for long), a proposal has been made to add suffixes for byte and short—Y and S respectively. This would eliminate to the need to cast to bytes when using literal syntax for byte (or short) arrays. Quoting the example from the proposal:

MAJOR BENEFIT: Why is the platform better if the proposal is adopted?

cruddy code like

 byte[] stuff = { 0x00, 0x7F, (byte)0x80,  (byte)0xFF};

can be recoded as

 byte[] ufum7 = { 0x00y, 0x7Fy, 0x80y, 0xFFy };

Joe Darcy is overseeing Project Coin for Java 7, and his blog has been an easy way to track these proposals.