Summary: Arithmetic Expressions

This lesson is a summary of the main points made in this chapter.

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Java has five operators for primitive numeric data: +, -, *, /, and %. Each has two operands, but + and - can also have only one operand.
Operators within an expression have a hierarchy or precedence. That is, they execute in a certain order, as follows:
1. Operators within parentheses
2. The unary operators + and -
3. The type-cast operator
4. The operators *, /, and %
5. The binary operators + and -
The data type of a binary operation is real if at least one of its operands is real. The data type is integer if both operands are integers.
The result of dividing two int operands is truncated to an integer.
We can assign a value whose data type appears in the following list to a variable whose data type is either the same or appears to its right in this list:
byte → short → int → long → float → double
In all other cases, a type cast is necessary.
A type cast converts a value from one data type to another compatible data type. We precede the value with the desired data type, enclosed in parentheses.
The class Math contains methods that perform standard mathematical functions, such as the square root and cosine. We use these methods by writing an expression in this form: Math.method_name(. . .)