Unboxing Long in java

Question

In some code I see this:

private void compute(Long a, Long b, Long c) {
        long result = a-(b+c);
...
         


        

Answer 1

The following line:

long result = a-(b+c);

...asks Java to take the result of the expression using 3 Longs, and then store it in a primitive long. Before Java 5, it would complain about the types not matching - but these days it just assumes you mean what you say and automatically does the conversion from object to primitive type for you.

In this example however, unless there's some other good reason not presented here, there's absolutely no point having the parameters as the boxed, object type in the first place.