Data-types in Java

Lets have a look at primitive datatypes in Java with their sizes and ranges.

S. No.	Data-type	Size	Range
1	byte	8-bit	-128 to 127
2	short	16-bit	-32,768 to 32,767
3	integer	32-bit	-2147483648 to 2147483647
4	long	64-bit	-9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807
5	float	32-bit	- Floating point integer -
6	double	64-bit	- Floating point integer -

Apart from these primitive data types, java.lang.String provides a data-type String.

Now lets look at the examples to learn how to use these in our programs. We'll be initializing these data-types and printing them to see how they look like...

Each data-type has its benefits and limitations. A good programmer exploits the benefits and avoids the limitation. Let us take the following case...

Assume we have a huge array of 10000000000 indices. And the value that we wish to store against each index is between 0 to 5. (Like in case of movie ratings!). So here, instead of using integer we can use byte to save space because we are certain that the value will never be greater than 5.

But at times we might tend to go over-board with this and encounter errors in our programs! Like if we wish to store radius of curvature of a rocket in flight, we would want to use a data-type that can hold huge and precise values rather than something like byte or short!

So its all about striking a good balance :)
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