(#61) Can you automatically/implicitly convert a char to a short?

[Pawel Nowacki]

The answer for this :
"No. They're the same bit-depth, but since chars are unsigned they might have a higher positive value than a short can accept"

I quite don't understand this. If by saying "automatically/implicitly convert a char to a short" we mean this:

short shortVal = 'c';

this compile and run ok, and i did it automatically/implicitly.
Now if we try to assign character which value is greater than 32767 then i understand that this will cause compilation error but does it mean i can't
"automatically/implicitly" try to do it (just like in casting)?

[sebastian tortschanoff]

That is a interresting question. What is the answer?

[W. Joe Smith]

Pawel Nowacki wrote:The answer for this :
"No. They're the same bit-depth, but since chars are unsigned they might have a higher positive value than a short can accept"

I quite don't understand this. If by saying "automatically/implicitly convert a char to a short" we mean this:

short shortVal = 'c';

this compile and run ok, and i did it automatically/implicitly.
Now if we try to assign character which value is greater than 32767 then i understand that this will cause compilation error but does it mean i can't
"automatically/implicitly" try to do it (just like in casting)?

Your example isn't taking a char and implicitly converting it to a short. You are just assigning the code for 'c' to a short.

 public class Conversion {
  char little = 'c';
  short t = little;

  public static void main(String[] args)  {
   System.out.println("Success");
  }
}   

This code declares little as a char and gives it the value 'c'. The next line declares t as a short, and tries to pass the value of 'little' into it. When the compiler tries to implicitly convert little to a short it fails, giving the following error:

 Conversion.java:3: possible loss of precision
          found:  char
          required: short