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

As everyone has pointed out, autoboxing lets you simplify some code, but you cannot pretend that primitives are complex types.

Also interesting: "autoboxing is a compiler-level hack" in Java. Autoboxing is basically a strange kludge added onto Java. Check out this post for more details about how strange it is.