Literals and variables

[sherifhanna82]

Hello everyone,

I am "New to Java" and have a VBA background. I bought 2 books on Java and am looking forward to writting my first program/Mobile App.

I am a bit confused about the literals and variable concept and it might have to do with my very recent introduction to VBA.

That said, here's my dilemma:

In VBA, once I declare a varialbe (Dim Age As Long) VBA know that this is Long and processes the variable as such. However, in Java, it looks like I have to suffix a long with an L or a 1 even though the Syntax states "Long X = 23452312;". Why do I need an L to indicate that the variable "X" in a long, when it's already declared as a long on the left side of the statement? Are variable types independent of the literal types in Java? If so, can someone please elaborate on that concept.

I appreciate all the help you provide and I am looking forward to a rich learning experience in the Java language.

Best regards,

S.

[doWhile]

The java compilers sees numbers without decimals as an integer data type unless specified differently...given an int and long are different data types, specifying the L lets the compiler know otherwise. For instance,

long myLong = 2341242341123412;//should throw a compile time error
...
long myLong = 2341242341123412L;//lets the compiler know the number is a long

The same can be said for other primitive data types (for instance float and double).

[DarrylBurke]

I have to suffix a long with an L or a 1

L or l -- NOT 1

Repeating that in code tags:

L or l -- NOT 1

The uppercase L is recommended to avoid just such ambiguity.

db

[Tolls]

Why do I need an L to indicate that the variable "X" in a long, when it's already declared as a long on the left side of the statement?

You're not telling it that 'X' is a Long, since as you say it already knows that.
You're telling it that the literal number on the right is a long.

[sherifhanna82]

Thanks y'all. I appreciate the thorough explanation; this makes sense.