Java: Arithmetic operation on byte

Question

What happened to my code? The following code worked for integer type of data, but couldn\'t work for byte type of data.

public class Exchange {
    public st         


        

Answer 1

If you want to perform an arithmetic operation on byte and assign it back to a byte variable you should explicitly let the compiler know that "you know what you're doing" otherwise you'll get the the error that you're losing information by converting int (the outcome of the arithmetic operation) to byte (on the left side).

To fix this, cast the outcome of the arithmetic operation back to byte:

    byte a = 23, b = 44;
    a = (byte) (a + b);
    b = (byte) (a - b);
    a = (byte) (a - b);