What is literal in Java?

Literals are the constant values that can be assigned to a variable.

Types of literals:

• Decimal Literal
• Octal Literal

int x = 060;        

System.out.println(x);

When you use 0 as a prefix in Java, then Java treats this value as an octal value.

So, the output of the above code will be 48.

But when you write code like this

int x = 078;        

then this will give an error (the literal of type int is out of range) because the range of octal value is 0-7.

• Hexadecimal Literal

int y = 0x45b;        

System.out.println("y is "+y);        

This line of code will print y is 1115.

In hexadecimal literal, Java is not case-sensitive.

So int y = 0x45b; and 0X45B; both are allowed.

Range of hexadecimal literal is 0-9 and a-f or A-F

• Binary Literal

When we use 0b as a prefix then the value becomes binary literal.

int g = 0b1010;        

System.out.println("g is "+g);        

The output will be 10;

The range of binary literal is 0-1.