Casting????

[rohan yadav]

In k&b book,

  class Alien {
String invade(short ships) { return "a few"; }
String invade(short... ships) { return "many"; }
}
class Defender {
public static void main(String [] args) {
System.out.println(new Alien().invade(7));
}
}  

What is the result?
A. many
B. a few
C. Compilation fails.
D. The output is not predictable.
E. An exception is thrown at runtime.

Answer is C,
And explanation was given as: C is correct, compilation fails. The var-args declaration is fine, but invade takes a short,
so the argument 7 needs to be cast to a short. With the cast, the answer is B, 'a few'.


But following line compiles fine
short s = 7;

My question is why cast is necessary while passing int as parameter in invade(7) method, I thought that 7 is implicitly converted to short??

[Ankur kothari]

while passing arguments casting isnt done....we have to provide them ourselves

[Ankur kothari]

see this
http://www.javaranch.com/journal/200508/Journal200508.jsp#a2

[rohan yadav]

Thanks Ankur, I got it