Chapter 3 How to work with the primitive data type Murach's Java Programming
implicit cast or widening conversion
If you assign a less precise data type to a more precise data type, or you assign a smaller data type to a larger data type, Java automatically performs the cast and makes the conversion.
primitive data type
There are 8: boolean , byte , char , short , int , long , float and double . These types serve as the building blocks of data manipulation in Java. Such types serve only one purpose — containing pure, simple values of a kind.
explicit cast or narrowing conversion
To code an assignment statement that assigns a more precise data type to a less precise data type, you must use parenthesis to specify the less precise data type.
Boolean value
True or False
Unary operators
operate on just one operand
Binary operators
operate on two operands
Compound assignment operators
provide a shorthand way to code common assignment operations. can also be referred to as Augmented assignment operators
floating point numbers
provide for very large and small numbers that require decimal positions, but with a limited number of significant digits.
ASCII character set
provides characters for English Language.
double-precision number
provides for numbers with up to 16 significant digits
single-precision number
provides for numbers with up to 7 significant digits
Variables
store data that changes as an application runs
Constants
store data that doesn't change as an application runs
Integers
whole numbers and their opposites
Arithmetic operators
+, -, *, /, %
Unicode character set
Provides for over 65,000 characters with two bytes for each character. Each character maps to an integer value
Assignment Statement
assigns values to variables
wrapper classes
can be used to construct Integer and Double objects that contain (wrap around) int and double values. This can be useful when you need to pass an int or double value to a method that only accepts objects, not primitive data types
arithmetic expression
consists of arithmetic operators that operate on one or more numbers known as operands