Java Coding Problems

81. Explicit downcast or better avoid var

In the Using var with primitive types section, we talked about using literals with primitive types (int, long, float, and double) to avoid issues caused by implicit type casting. But not all Java primitive types can take advantage of literals. In such a situation, the best approach is to avoid using var. But let's see why!

Check out the following declarations of byte and short variables:

byte byteNumber = 25;     // this is of type byteshort shortNumber = 1463; // this is of type short

If we replace the explicit types with var, then the inferred type will be int:

var byteNumber = 25;    // inferred as intvar shortNumber = 1463; // inferred as int

Unfortunately, there are no literals available for these two ...