2.2. Primitive Data Types

Figure 2.1 gives an overview of the primitive data types in Java.

Primitive data types in Java can be divided into three main categories:

• Integral types— represent signed integers (byte, short, int, long) and unsigned character values (char)

• Floating-point types (float, double)— represent fractional signed numbers

• Boolean type (boolean)— represent logical values

Primitive data values are not objects. Each primitive data type defines the range of values in the data type, and operations on these values are defined by special operators in the language (see Chapter 3).

Each primitive data type also has a corresponding wrapper class that can be used to represent a primitive value as an object. Wrapper classes are discussed in Section 10.3.

Integer Types

Table 2.9. Range of Integer Values

Data Type	Width (bits)	Minimum value MIN_VALUE	Maximum value MAX_VALUE
byte	8	-27 (-128)	27-1 (+127)
short	16	-215 (-32768)	215-1 (+32767)
int	32	-231 (-2147483648)	231-1 (+2147483647)
long	64	-263 (-9223372036854775808L)	263-1 (+9223372036854775807L)

Integer data types are byte, short, int, and long (see Table 2.9). Their values are signed integers represented by 2's complement (see Section G.4, p. 598).

Character Type

Table 2.10. Range of Character Values

Data Type	Width (bits)	Minimum Unicode value	Maximum Unicode value
char	16	0x0 (u0000)	0xffff (uffff)

Characters are represented by the data type char (see Table 2.10). Their values are unsigned integers that denote all the 65536 (2¹⁶) characters in the 16-bit Unicode character set. This set includes letters, digits, and special characters.

The first 128 characters of the Unicode set are the same as the 128 characters of the 7-bit ASCII character set, and the first 256 characters of the Unicode set correspond to the 256 characters of the 8-bit ISO Latin-1 character set.

Floating-point Types

Table 2.11. Range of Floating-point Values

Data Type	Width (bits)	Minimum Positive Value MIN_VALUE	Maximum Positive Value MAX_VALUE
float	32	1.401298464324817E-45f	3.402823476638528860e+38f
double	64	4.94065645841246544e-324	1.79769313486231570e+308

Floating-point numbers are represented by the float and double data types.

Floating-point numbers conform to the IEEE 754-1985 binary floating-point standard. Table 2.11 shows the range of values for positive floating-point numbers, but these apply equally to negative floating-point numbers with the '-' sign as prefix. Zero can be either 0.0 or -0.0.

Since the size for representation is finite, certain floating-point numbers can only be represented as approximations. For example, the value of the expression (1.0/3.0) is represented as an approximation due to the finite number of bits used.

Boolean Type

Table 2.12. Boolean Values

Data Type	Width	True Value Literal	False Value Literal
boolean	not applicable	true	false

The data type boolean represents the two logical values denoted by the literals true and false (see Table 2.12).

Boolean values are produced by all relational (see Section 3.9), conditional (see Section 3.12) and boolean logical operators (see Section 3.11), and are primarily used to govern the flow of control during program execution.

Table 2.13 summarizes the pertinent facts about the primitive data types: their width or size, which indicates the number of the bits required to store a primitive value; their range (of legal values), which is specified by the minimum and the maximum values permissible; and the name of the corresponding wrapper class.

Table 2.13. Summary of Primitive Data Types

Data Type	Width (bits)	Minimum Value, Maximum Value	Wrapper Class
boolean	not applicable	true, false (no ordering implied)	Boolean
byte	8	-27, 27-1	Byte
short	16	-215, 215-1	Short
char	16	0x0, 0xffff	Character
int	32	-231, 231-1	Integer
long	64	-263, 263-1	Long
float	32	±1.40129846432481707e-45f, ±3.402823476638528860e+38f	Float
double	64	'b14.94065645841246544e-324, 'b11.79769313486231570e+308	Double