How can I convert a long to int in Java?

Question

How can I convert a long to int in Java?

Answer 1

For small values, casting is enough:

long l = 42;
int i = (int) l;

However, a long can hold more information than an int, so it's not possible to perfectly convert from long to int, in the general case. If the long holds a number less than or equal to Integer.MAX_VALUE you can convert it by casting without losing any information.

For example, the following sample code:

System.out.println( "largest long is " + Long.MAX_VALUE );
System.out.println( "largest int is " + Integer.MAX_VALUE );

long x = (long)Integer.MAX_VALUE;
x++;
System.out.println("long x=" + x);

int y = (int) x;
System.out.println("int y=" + y);

produces the following output on my machine:

largest long is 9223372036854775807
largest int is 2147483647
long x=2147483648
int y=-2147483648

Notice the negative sign on y. Because x held a value one larger than Integer.MAX_VALUE, int y was unable to hold it. In this case, it wrapped around to the negative numbers.

If you wanted to handle this case yourself, you might do something like:

if ( x > (long)Integer.MAX_VALUE ) {
    // x is too big to convert, throw an exception or something useful
}
else {
    y = (int)x;
}

All of this assumes positive numbers. For negative numbers, use MIN_VALUE instead of MAX_VALUE.