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Primitives

There are eight primitive data types in Java, each using a certain number of bytes of memory.

Type Minimum Maximum Default Size
byte -128 127 0 8-bit signed integer
short -32768 32767 0 16-bit signed integer
int -2147483648 2147483647 0 32-bit signed integer
long -9223372036854775808 9223372036854775807 0 64-bit signed integer
char \u0000 \uffff \u0000 16-bit Unicode
float -1.40239846e-45 3.40282347e+38 +0.0F 32-bit IEEE float
double -4.94065645841246533e-324 1.79769313486231570e+308 +0.0D 64-bit IEEE double
boolean false true false N/A

Precision

  • float = about 6 decimal places
  • double = about 15 decimal places

Practice Exercise

As a developer, you should know the exact bounds for a byte. Also know that the max for a short is about 32,000, and an int about 2 billion.


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