In java, data types are classified into two catagories :
1. Primitive Data type
2. Non-Primitive Data type
1) Primitive Data type
A primitive data type can be of eight types :
Primitive Data types
char boolean byte short int long float double
Once a primitive data type has been declared its type can never change,
although in most cases its value can change. These eight primitive type
can be put into four groups
Integer
This group includes byte, short, int, long
byte : It is 1 byte(8-bits) integer data type. Value range from -128 to
127. Default value zero. example: byte b=10;
short : It is 2 bytes(16-bits) integer data type. Value range from -32768
to 32767. Default value zero. example: short s=11;
int : It is 4 bytes(32-bits) integer data type. Value range from -
2147483648 to 2147483647. Default value zero. example: int i=10;
long : It is 8 bytes(64-bits) integer data type. Value range from -
9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. Default
value zero. example: long l=100012;
Floating-Point Number
This group includes float, double
float : It is 4 bytes(32-bits) float data type. Default value
0.0f. example: float ff=10.3f;
double : It is 8 bytes(64-bits) float data type. Default value
0.0d. example: double db=11.123;
Example:
In this example, we used floating point type and declared
variables to hold floating values. Floating type is useful to
store decimal point values.
Characters
This group represent char, which represent symbols in a character set,
like letters and numbers.
char : It is 2 bytes(16-bits) unsigned unicode character. Range 0 to
65,535. example: char c='a';
Boolean
This group represent boolean, which is a special type for representing
true/false values. They are defined constant of the language.
example: boolean b=true;
2) Non-Primitive(Reference) Data type
A reference data type is used to refer to an object. A
reference variable is declare to be of specific and that type
can never be change.
For example: String str, here str is a reference variable of
type String. String is a class in Java. We will talk a lot more
about reference data type later in Classes and Object lesson.
Reference type are used to hold reference of an object.
Object can be instance of any class or entity.
In object oriented system, we deal with object that stores
properties. To refer those objects we use reference types.
Identifiers in Java
All Java components require names. Name used for classes,
methods, interfaces and variables are called Identifier.
Identifier must follow some rules. Here are the rules:
All identifiers must start with either a letter( a to z or A
to Z ) or currency character($) or an underscore.
After the first character, an identifier can have any
combination of characters.
Java keywords cannot be used as an identifier.
Identifiers in Java are case sensitive, foo and Foo are two
different identifiers.
Some valid identifiers are: int a, class Car, float
amount etc.