Assignment

[Akhil Maharaj]

Hi ,

Why can not we assign a short or byte to char variable ?

 class Q015 {
 

 
public static void main ( String ka [ ] ) {
 
byte a = 10 ;
    final int x = 10 ;
 

 
byte y = x ;
char c = x ;
        short j = a = x ;
 

       // char ch = a; // compile error    line 1
 
       short p = 20;
       char  pc = p;    // compiler error   line 2
 
   int i =30;
   char ic = i ;   // compile error     line3
}
}   

[Kelvin Chenhao Lim]

The answer is very simple. The range of char is 0 to 65535, whereas the range of byte is -128 to 127 and the range of short is -32768 to 32767. Since char cannot hold negative values, you may not get the expected result when you assign a negative byte or short value to a char variable. This is why Java refuses to let you perform the assignment without an explicit cast (e.g. "short s = -128; char c = (char)s;")

[Akhil Maharaj]

Thanks for the quick reply.

[Jesper de Jong]

Note: Please quote your sources.