Java™ Application Development on Linux - Dator

54Chapter 3An Experienced Programmer’s Introduction to JavaExample 3.1 Coercing a byte to int as if the byte were unsignedbyte c;int ival;...ival = ((int) c) && 0xFF; // explicit cast needed3.2.1.2 Floating Point TypesJava provides two different precisions of floating point numbers. They are:• float: 32 bits• double: 64 bitsThe float type is not very useful at that precision, so double is muchmore commonly seen. For other situations where precision is important, butyou can spare some cycles, consider the BigDecimal and BigIntegerobject classes.Java floating point numbers are specified to follow the IEEE floating pointstandard, IEEE 754.3.2.1.3 Other TypesJava also has a boolean type, along with constants true and false. In Java,unlike C/C++, boolean values are a distinct type, and do not convert tonumeric types. For example, it is common in C to write:if (strlen(instr)) {strcpy(buffer, instr);}In this case, the integer result of strlen() is used as a boolean, where 0 isfalse and any other value is true. This doesn’t work in Java. The expressionmust be of a boolean type.Java also has a char type, which is not the same as a byte. The char is acharacter, and in Java, characters are represented using Unicode (UTF-16).They take two bytes each.For more discussion on the differences between bytes and chars andabout Unicode, read the Java tutorial on the java.sun.com Web site or visitwww.unicode.org, the international standard’s Web site.