Why doesn't Java autoboxing extend to method invocations of methods of the autoboxed types?

Question

I want to convert a primitive to a string, and I tried:

myInt.toString();

This fails with the error:

int cannot be derefere         


        

Answer 1

seems like a shortcoming of the specification to me

There are more shortcomings and this is a subtle topic. Check this out:

public class methodOverloading{
   public static void hello(Integer x){
      System.out.println("Integer");
   }

   public static void hello(long x){
      System.out.println("long");
   }

   public static void main(String[] args){
      int i = 5;
      hello(i);
   }
}

Here "long" would be printed (haven't checked it myself), because the compiler choses widening over autoboxing. Be careful when using autoboxing or don't use it at all!