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We provide some additional information here about integers, as well as stressing again some points made previously. This continues the discussion of integers in Chapter 2: Java : Primitive data types

Java offers 5 types of integer:

• byte - 8-bit, signed
• short - 16-bit, signed
• int - 32-bit, signed
• long - 64-bit, signed
• char - 16-bit, can be treated as unsigned integer in some situations

The table showed the ranges of values of each type. The pages Chapter 2: Java : Casting & Mixing and Chapter 2: Tech : More Casting & Mixing discuss how the types can be converted from one to another.

Here are some other aspects of using integers:

• No overflow and underflow warnings - unlike the case for the floating point types, there are no special values for the integer types that indicate that the maximum value has been exceeded or that a value has gone below the negative minimum values. Exceeding the maximum value will flip the value into the negative range while continuing past the minimum negative value will flip the value into the positive range.
  
  
• Maximum and minimum values constants - the wrapper classes (to be discussed later) provide constants that give the maximum and minimum values for each type. These can can be useful for testing for overflows/underflows since, as discussed above, no exceptions are thrown in such cases.
  
  
  • byte
    • Byte.MIN_VALUE  -2⁷ = -128
    • Byte.MAX_VALUE  2⁷-1 = 127
  • short
    • short.MIN_VALUE  -2¹⁵ = -32768
    • Short.MAX_VALUE  2¹⁵-1 = 32767
  • int
    • Integer.MIN_VALUE  -2³¹ = -2147483648
    • Integer.MAX_VALUE  2³¹-1 = 2147483647
  • long
    • Long.MIN_VALUE  -2⁶³ = -9223372036854775808l
    • Long.MAX_VALUE  2⁶³-1 = 9223372036854775807l
      
      
• Divide by zero errors - unlike the floating point types ( float and double), integer divide by zero leads to a run time exception that will stop the processing unless caught as discussed later.

References & Web Resources

• Chapter 10 : Tech: Arbitrary Precision discusses the arbitrary precision class BigInteger class.
• Chapter 10 : Tech: Bits discusses bit handling in Java data.
• Ronal Mak, Java Number Cruncher...

Latest update: Oct. 15, 2004

            Tech
Arithmetic Ops
Math Class
More on Integers
FP : Overview
FP : Java  
  Demo 1
More Mix/Cast
  Demo 2
Exercises

           Physics
Differential Eq.
Euler Method
  Demo 1
Predictor-Corrector
  Demo 2
Exercises