Primitive Data Types

As we discussed briefly in the previous lesson, primitive data types are the most basic types of data in Java. Primitive variables directly store primitive values. In the context of the AP Computer Science exam, we will look into three primitive data types: int, double, and boolean. All of these types are constructed using a binary notation (i.e., base $2$ digits: $0$ and $1$). However, the representation of each varies.

int type in Java

We use the int type variable to represent integers. The size of an int type variable is $4$ bytes, or $32$ bits. You can assign both positive and negative integer values to such a variable. It uses two’s complement representation. Let’s briefly take a look at this representation.

You may recall the binary representation of numbers from school but feel free to take a look at this recapBinaryNotation.

You can represent any positive integer in binary notation, but what about the negative integers? That’s where two’s complement comes in handy.

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