Data Types

🔢 Data Types in Java

Java is a strongly typed language, meaning each variable must be declared with a specific data type. Java supports two main categories of data types: primitive and reference types.

🏷️ Primitive Data Types

Java has eight primitive data types, each with a specific size and value range:

1. byte – 1 byte, range: -128 to 127
2. short – 2 bytes, range: -32,768 to 32,767
3. int – 4 bytes, range: -2^31 to 2^31-1
4. long – 8 bytes, range: -2^63 to 2^63-1
5. float – 4 bytes, single-precision floating point
6. double – 8 bytes, double-precision floating point
7. char – 2 bytes, represents a single character
8. boolean – 1 bit, either true or false

🧱 Reference Data Types

Reference types are objects, arrays, or any other instance of a class. They do not hold the actual data but refer to the memory location where the data is stored.

• String – Sequence of characters (reference type, not primitive).
• Arrays – Reference type that holds a fixed number of elements of a specified type.

🧪 Example

public class DataTypesExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int x = 5;              // primitive data type
        String message = "Hi";  // reference data type

        System.out.println("Integer: " + x);
        System.out.println("String: " + message);
    }
}

🔗 Related Notes

• Variables
• Operators
• Program Control Statements
• Arrays
• Strings