why long data type is type cast into float first while long takes 8 byte and float takes 4 byte??

[viki Bhardwaj]

Hi Everybody!
I am a bit confused that a long type takes 8 byte of space and float type takes 4 byte then how it is possible to type cast a long type into float first..
as i know that if i have two method like-
void show(float f)
void show(double d)
and if i try to call show() method by passing a long type value then it look for exact match if not found then it implicit type cast into float and give the result as float value...

please explain it......i am confused..........

[Stephan van Hulst]

A numeric primitive type is wider than another not if it can store more information, but if its range is bigger than the other type's range.

long has values up to 2^63 -1
float has values up to about: 3.4 * 10^38

Float is about 74,000,000 trillion times wider than long is. It's just not really good at representing values exactly.