(Coursenotes for CSC 203 Project-based Object-oriented Programming and Design)

Arithmetic and Type-casting

This brief lesson is about arithmetic in Java. In the previous lesson, we learned the different primitive data types in Java, including the numerical data types short, int, long, float, and double.

In this lesson we’ll establish some rules of evaluation for expressions involving these types.

Note: By expression, I mean anything that evaluates to a value. For example 3 + 5 is an expression that evaluates to the value 8. "why are you yelling".toUpperCase() is an expression that evaluates to the value "WHY ARE YOU YELLING".

Arithmetic operators

Ok, so. Arithmetic. We already know a few arithmetic operators:

All of these are binary operators. This means that each operator works on two operands. So in the expression 3 + 5, 3 and 5 are operands, and + is the operator.

Unlike Python, which you learned in CSC 101 and 202, there is no ** (exponentiation) or // (floor division) operator. The two slashes (//) are reserved for inline comments in Java.

Arithmetic involving operands of the same type

When both operands in a binary expression are of the same type, then the result will also be of that type.

In the examples below, remember from the previous lesson that when you simply use the literal values 5 and 2, Java treats them as the int type (as opposed to the short or long type). So the expressions below are all using int operands.

int addResult = 5 + 2; // 7
int subResult = 5 - 2; // 3
int multResult = 5 * 2; // 10
int modResult = 5 % 2; // 1

So far so good.

But what if we start playing with division? Consider the expression 5 / 2. If we were in a math class, the answer would be 2.5, which is certainly not an integer.

int divResult = 5 / 2; // What's the value of divResult?

Open up a terminal window and type jshell and hit enter.

This will place you in a Java shell, a place where you can run small Java programs, including testing out individual expressions.

Use jshell to evaluate the expression 5 / 2.

jshell 
jshell> 5 / 2
$1 ==> 2

You got the result 2!

However, if we were to divide 5.0 / 2.0, we’d get the expected answer.

jshell> 5.0 / 2.0
$2 ==> 2.5

Remember that 5 / 2 is an int / int expression. Per our rule above, Java is going to therefore produce an int in return. A double / double expression, on the other hand, will result in a value of type double.

When the result of an integer division in Java is a fractional number (i.e., it has a decimal point), Java simply omits or truncates everything after the decimal point.

So the value of the expression 5 / 2 is 2.

Note that simply changing the type of our result variable won’t help.

double divResult = 5 / 2; // Answer 2.0

Tracing the code above, it does the following:

So how would we get the answer 2.5 by dividing 5 and 2?

Arithmetic involving operands of different types

If you used two different types in an arithmetic expression, the result takes the “more precise” type.

If, instead of dividing two ints, you divided an int and a double, you would get a double in return. Because at least one operand is using the more precise type, the result will default to that more precise type.

The expression below, 5 / 2.0 is a int / double expression. So the result will be a double, which is the more precise data type of the two.

double mixedDiv = 5 / 2.0; // Answer: 2.5

The same goes for using the different integer types.

Remember that both int and long are integer data types. If you add an int and a long (or perform any operation between an int and a long), you’ll get a long in return. This is because the long is the more precise type (it takes up more memory, allowing for a larger range of numbers).

long longAdd = 5 + 8L; // Will get the value 13 as a long

Attempting to store the result above in an int will result in a compiler error.

int add = 5 + 8L; // Error: incompatible types: possible lossy conversion from long to int

And this makes sense. Suppose we evaluated the expression 5 + 2147483647L (5 plus the maximum possible int value). We cannot possibly the store result in an int variable—it’s too big!

Type casting

Finally, you can tell your compiler to treat certain values as other types instead of their own types. This is known as type-casting. You are “casting” or converting a specific value into another type.

A type-cast is performed by typing the name of the type you want to convert to in parentheses before the value you want to convert.

int basicInt = 5;
double nowItsADouble = (double) basicInt; // becomes 5.0

You can also lose data this way!

double basicDouble = 5.2;
int nowItsAnInt = (int) basicDouble; // becomes 5; you lost the .2

Type-casting can be used when you have two integer values that you need to divide, but you need a precise result.

int a = 132;
int b = 25;

double result = (double) a / b; // The result is 5.28

Tracing the code above, the following takes place:

In the example above, a was cast to a double before performing the division. So it became a double / int operation, giving a double back as a result.

Type-casting is a unary operation.

Unlike the arithmetic operators we saw earlier, which were binary operators (i.e., they applied to 2 operands), type-casting is a unary operator. It applies to only one operand.

The type-cast will be applied to the value on the right of the type-cast operator (i.e., the data type you want to convert to).

Consider the following expressions and the steps involved in evaluating them:

Finally, type-casting applies only to values, not to variables.

Since Java is a statically-typed language, you can never change the data type of a variable. You can only change the type of a value for use in a particular statement or expression.

Consider the same example from above.

int a = 132;
int b = 25;

double result = (double) a / b;

In the code above, the type-cast only applies to the value 132 within the expression. The data type of a has not changed, and future uses of a will still evaluate to 132, not 132.0.