What does it mean to say a type is “boxed”?

Question

I have heard of types being referred to as \"boxed\" in some languages.

In Java, I have heard of \"autoboxing\". What is this? Is it having wrapper classes for a ty

Answer 1

More specific information for Java:

Autoboxing allows java to automatically convert things like boolean and int to their Object versions Boolean and Integer automatically in most cases. It also allows the reverse to happen.

For example:

int a = 3; // no boxing is happening
Integer b = 3;  // newer versions of java automatically convert the int 3 to Integer 3
int c = b;  // these same versions also automatically convert Integer 3 to int 3

Older versions of java that do not have autoboxing will require this code to do the same thing:

int a = 3;  // works the same
Integer b = new Integer(3);  //must set up a Integer object manually
int c = b.intValue(); //must change Integer object to a primitive

However, there are some scenarios where you still have to do things manually. For example, imagine you have a class with two methods like so:

assertEquals(int a, int b);
assertEquals(Object a, Object b)

Now, if you try to do this:

Integer a = 3;
int b = 3;
assertEquals(a, b);  // this will not compile

The reason this doesn't work is because it cannot figure out whether it should unbox a to an int or box b to an Integer. Therefore it is ambiguous which method signature should be called. To fix this you can do one of these:

assertEquals((int) a, b);
assertEquals(a, (Integer) b);