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Is there a default type for numbers in Java

If I write something like this

System.out.println(18);

Which type has the ’18’? Is it int or byte? Or doesn’t it have a type yet?

It can’t be int, because something like this is correct:

byte b = 3;

And this is incorrect:

int i = 3;
byte bb = i; //error!

EDIT: I think I found the right part in the spec at Assignment Conversion :

The compile-time narrowing of constants means that code such as:

byte theAnswer = 42;

is allowed. Without the narrowing, the fact that the integer literal 42 has type int would mean that a cast to byte would be required:

byte theAnswer = (byte) 42; // cast is permitted but not required

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Answer

This

18

is known as an integer literal. There are all sorts of literals, floating point, String, character, etc.

In the following,

byte b = 3;

the literal 3 is an integer literal. It’s also a constant expression. And since Java can tell that 3 fits in a byte, it can safely apply a narrowing primitive conversion and store the result in a byte variable.

In this

int i = 3;
byte bb = i; //error!

the literal 3 is a constant expression, but the variable i is not. The compiler simply decides that i is not a constant expression and therefore doesn’t go out of its way to figure out its value, a conversion to byte may lose information (how to convert 12345 to a byte?) and should therefore not be allowed. You can override this behavior by making i a constant variable

final int i = 3;
byte bb = i; // no error!

or by specifying an explicit cast

int i = 3;
byte bb = (byte) i; // no error!
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