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Bytecode basics

A first look at the bytecodes of the Java virtual machine

By Bill Venners, JavaWorld.com, 09/01/96

Page 9 of 10

Type conversions

Opcodes that convert from an int to a type smaller than int are shown in the following table. No opcodes exist that convert directly from a long, float, or double to the types smaller than int. Therefore converting from a float to a byte, for example, would require two steps. First the float must be converted to an int with f2i, then the resulting int can be converted to a byte with int2byte.

Although opcodes exist that convert an int to primitive types smaller than int (byte, short, and char), no opcodes exist that convert in the opposite direction. This is because any bytes, shorts, or chars are effectively converted to int before being pushed onto the stack. Arithmetic operations upon bytes, shorts, and chars are done by first converting the values to int, performing the arithmetic operations on the ints, and being happy with an int result. This means that if you add 2 bytes you get an int, and if you want a byte result you must explicitly convert the int result back to a byte. For example, the following code won't compile:

 class BadArithmetic {
        byte addOneAndOne() {
                byte a = 1;
                byte b = 1;
                byte c = a + b;
                return c;
        }
}

When presented with the above code, javac objects with the following remark:

 BadArithmetic.java(7): Incompatible type for declaration. Explicit cast needed to convert int to byte.
                byte c = a + b;
                     ^

To remedy the situation, the Java programmer must explicitly convert the int result of the addition of a + b back to a byte, as in the following code:

 class GoodArithmetic {
        byte addOneAndOne() {
                byte a = 1;
                byte b = 1;
                byte c = (byte) (a + b);
                return c;
        }
}

This makes javac so happy it drops a GoodArithmetic.class file, which contains the following bytecode sequence for the addOneAndOne() method: