CP1344: PROGRAMMING IN JAVA Lecture -9- Data Types in Java -BCA -s3.

Data Types in Java
A data type is an attribute of a variable which tells the compiler or interpreter how the programmer intends to use the variable. It defines the operations that can be done on the data and what type of values can be stored.
Every variable in Java has a data type. Data types specify the size and type of values that can be stored,
Java language is rich in its data types. The variety of data types available allow the programmer to
select the type appropriate to the needs of the application.



Primitive types are also called intrinsic or built-in types.
Non Primitive types are also known as reference types or Derived types
Integer Types
Integer types can hold whole numbers. The size of the values that can be stored depends on the integer data type that we choose. Java supports four types of integers they are byte, short, int, and long. Java does not support the concept of unsigned types and
therefore all Java values are signed meaning they can be positive or negative.
Floating Point Types
Integer types can hold only whole numbers and therefore another type known as floating point type is used to hold numbers containing fractional parts such as 27.59 (known as floating point constants). There are two kinds of floating point storage in Java The float type values are single-precision numbers while the double types present double-precision numbers.
Floating point numbers are treated as double-precision quantities. To force them to be in single-precision mode, we must append f or F to the numbers,
Example:
1.23f
7, 56923e5F

Floating point data types support a special value known as Not-a-Number (NaN). NaN is used to represent the result of operations such as dividing zero by zero, where an actual number is not produced. Most operations that have NaN as an operand will produce NaN as a result.
Character Type
In order to store character constants in memory, Java provides a character data type called char. The char type assumes a size of 2 bytes but, basically, it can hold only a single character
Boolean Type
Boolean type is used when we want to test a particular condition during the execution of the program.
There are only two values that a boolean type can take: true or false. Boolean type is denoted by the
keyword boolean and uses only one bit of storage.
Character Type
In order to store character constants in memory, Java provides a character data type called char. The char type assumes a size of 2 bytes but, basically, it can hold only a single character
Boolean Type
Boolean type is used when we want to test a particular condition during the execution of the program.
There are only two values that a boolean type can take: true or false. Boolean type is denoted by the
keyword boolean and uses only one bit of storage.