• A Java literal is a sequence of characters (digit, letters and other characters) that represent constant value to be stored in variable.
• A literal is the source code representation of a fixed value.

Java Specifies 5 major types of literals :

1. Integer Literals

2. Floating-Point Literals

3. Character Literals

4. String Literals

5. Boolean Literals

Integer Literals :

• An integer literal is of type long if it ends with the letter L or l; otherwise it is of type int.
• Values of the integral types byte, short, int, and long can be created from int literals.
• There are four ways to represent integer number in the Java language :

  1. Decimal ( base 10 )

     int x = 20;

  2. Octal ( base 8 )

     int x = 076; (starts with 0)

  3. Hexadecimal ( base 16 )

     int x = 0x13A; (starts with 0x)

  4. Binary (base 2 )

     int x = 0b101; (starts with 0b)

Float-Point Literals :

• Floating-Point numbers are defined as a number, a decimal symbol, and one or more numbers representing the fraction.
  For Example:
       double d = 223.56;
• Floating-points literals are defined as double (64 bits) by default, so if you want to assign a floating-point literal to a variable of type float ( 32 bits),you must attach the suffix F or f to the number;
  For Example:
       float f = 223.56F;

Character Literals :

• A character literal is represented by a single character in single quotes.
  For Example:
       char a = 'a' ;
       char c = '@' ;
• You can also type in the Unicode value of the character, using the Unicode notation of prefixing the value with \u.
  For Example:
      char ch = '\u0041' ; //letter 'A'

String Literals :

• In Java, string literals are enclosed within double quotes.
  For Example:
       String s = "Java Prowess" ;
• String literals are not only a sequence of character as in 'C', these are objects of type java.lang.String .
  For Example:
       String s = "Java Prowess" ;

Boolean Literals :

• Boolean literals are the source code representation for boolean value. A boolean value can only be defined as true or false.
• Although in 'C' (and some other languages) it is common to use number to represent true or false, this will not work in Java.
     boolean b = true ;//Legal
     boolean b = 1 ;//Compiler Error