SCJP Certification

In Java, a narrowing conversion is also known as an explicit type conversion or casting. When the destination data type is narrower than the source data type, an explicit type conversion is required. The general form of this explicit conversion is given below:

(target-type) value

Here, target-type is the desired data type and value is the value to be converted.

For example:

int a, int b;
short c;
c= (short)(a+b);

Here, the sum of two 32-bit integer data type variables a and b is assigned to another variable c, which is of integer type short (16-bit). Therefore, an explicit conversion takes place before assigning the value to c. Otherwise, if this explicit type conversion is not performed, and the sum of variables a and b is directly assigned to variable c, a compile-time error will be generated.