Java™ Language Specification, Third Edition, The

Chapter 5. Conversions and Promotions

	Thou art not for the fashion of these times,Where none will sweat but for promotion.
	--William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, scene iii

Every expression written in the Java programming language has a type that can be deduced from the structure of the expression and the types of the literals, variables, and methods mentioned in the expression. It is possible, however, to write an expression in a context where the type of the expression is not appropriate. In some cases, this leads to an error at compile time. In other cases, the context may be able to accept a type that is related to the type of the expression; as a convenience, rather than requiring the programmer to indicate a type conversion explicitly, ...