Java 2 v5.0 (Tiger) New Features by Herbert Schildt

[Keith Lockey]

Autoboxing/unboxing change the interplay between primitive types and objects by providing automatic wrapping and unwrapping of primitive values. This occurs behind the scenes. Although easy to use, and a great new feature in my opinion, it also introduces potential side effects

Does this mean you don't have to use classes like Integer to convert a primitive int to a long through the method Integer.longValue()? How would you do this with Java v5.0?

[Herb Schildt]

Keith:

No, you would still use techniques such as Integer.longValue(). Autoboxing does not provide for conversions between types. It simply automatically wraps a primitive into its corresponding type wrapper.