What is explicit type casting?

Question

Could someone tell me what is explicit type casting?

Answer 1

Explicit type casting means forcing a smaller datatype variable to store a larger datatype value, overriding the default JAVA type casting rules. I'll explain this with an example:

int a=2;

double b=a;  /*this does not throw any errors as 'double' is larger datatype than 'int' */

a=b;              /* this throws an error because 'int' can't store a value of 'double' type since 'int' is smaller */

a=(int)b;       /* this doesn't throw any errors and this is an example of explicit type-casting */

You can refer to this table for looking up JAVA datatype sizes: (source: w3schools)

Data Type	Size	Description
byte	1 byte	Stores whole numbers from -128 to 127
short	2 bytes	Stores whole numbers from -32,768 to 32,767
int	4 bytes	Stores whole numbers from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647
long	8 bytes	Stores whole numbers from -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807
float	4 bytes	Stores fractional numbers. Sufficient for storing 6 to 7 decimal digits
double	8 bytes	Stores fractional numbers. Sufficient for storing 15 decimal digits
boolean	1 bit	Stores true or false values
char	2 bytes	Stores a single character/letter or ASCII values