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I'm studying the book for the JAVA OCA certification. I'm in the chapter of binary operator. The book mentions the following rule.

byte, short and char will be promoted to int when they use binary operators.

So, at the moment, if I define and initialize a variable of type short or byte it will be automatically converted to int. In the book, it says = assignment is a binary operator.

Is there any point of using these kind of variables?

How can I print this type of variable in java?

ajb
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Jheison Rodriguez
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    Probably be the duplicate question [click here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27582233/why-byte-and-short-values-are-promoted-to-int-when-an-expression-is-evaluated) – Mehraj Malik Apr 01 '16 at 04:44
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    `byte a = -1` is not converted to an `int`. It's promoted to an `int` if you use a *binary operator* (or arithmetic operator); `byte b = a + (byte)1; // < --int` – Elliott Frisch Apr 01 '16 at 04:45
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    Assignment is not really a binary operator. Either the book is confusing, or you read it wrong. – ajb Apr 01 '16 at 05:11
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    @Vin Please be careful about editing when there's a quote involved. If the OP says that a book says "assignment is a binary operator", then you really should not make a major change, such as changing to "operation", unless you know what book he's talking about and know what it says. – ajb Apr 01 '16 at 05:14
  • @ajb I have just edited the post to remove 'Thanks. The said edit has been done by another user. You may rollback if you think it conflicts with OP's intent. – Vin Apr 01 '16 at 05:17
  • @Vin I'm really sorry. I got careless. – ajb Apr 01 '16 at 05:18
  • @ajb no need to be sorry. For a community edited site, you have all the rights to question anything you think is out of place. – Vin Apr 01 '16 at 05:19

2 Answers2

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Such variables would not be converted to int whenever you define them. They will be promoted to int when using them together with a binary operator like the & operator. Get class name of an object by using:

variablename.getClass().getName()

Bilesh Ganguly
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Jakob Pålsson
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Given an instance of any object, you can call its getClass() method to get an instance of the Class object that describe the type of the object.

Using the Class object, you can easily print its type name:

Integer number=Integer.valueOf(15);
System.out.println(number.getClass().getName());
Arnaud
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Mehraj Malik
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