literals

■ The seven characters which denote floating point literals are: . (dot), d, D, e, E, f, F with e as in 400e+20 meaning 400 raised to 20th power. Caps or small is OK for these letters. i.e.

long x = 20L; works.

long x = 20l; works.

■ The six characters which denote automatic casting are d and D for double, f and F for float, and l and L for long.

There is no S for short, no B for byte, no I for int, and no C for char.

■ A leading zero means it’s Octal coming in. Otherwise the assigned value is interpreted as decimal. i.e.

long x = 010; yields 8.

char x = '\077'; shows that octal will work with or without a backslash.

■ A leading zero and an x means it’s hex coming in. i.e.

long x = 0xffff;

long x = 0Xffff; both work

■ You cannot insert blanks to separate the four hex digit characters. i.e.

long x = 0Xff ff; will not compile.

■ Note that hex digits can also be capitals. i.e. ff is the same as FF

■ You do not need orderly pairs of hex digits. i.e.

float f = 0x7; compiles.

float f = 0x777; compiles.

■ Primitive chars can optionally be assigned using int equivalents, without the usual single quotes. i.e.

char A = 65; This is the letter A.

■ Unlike with hex, for a char you must show all 4 hex digits. i.e.

char x = ‘\uff’; will not compile - not enough digits.

char x = 0Xff; compiles.

■ Note that the print(...) method attempts to print chars as the Unicode character they represent.

So trying to print anything with a value over char 127 prints as a question mark.