15.7.1

Literals

EXPRESSIONS

The second unusual feature avoids a potential grammatical ambiguity in the

expression:

new int[3][3]

which in Java always means a single creation of a multidimensional array, but

which, without appropriate grammatical finesse, might also be interpreted as

meaning the same as:

(new int[3])[3]

This ambiguity is eliminated by splitting the expected definition of

Primary

 into

Primary

 and

PrimaryNoNewArray

. (This may be compared to the splitting of

Statement

 into

Statement

 and

StatementNoShortIf

 ( 14.4) to avoid the  dangling

else

  problem.)

15.7.1   Literals

A literal ( 3.10) denotes a fixed, unchanging value.

The following production from  3.10 is repeated here for convenience:

Literal:

IntegerLiteral

FloatingPointLiteral

BooleanLiteral

CharacterLiteral

StringLiteral

NullLiteral

The type of a literal is determined as follows:

The type of an integer literal that ends with

L

 or

l

 is

long

; the type of any

other integer literal is

int

.

The type of a floating point literal that ends with

F

 or

f

 is

float

; the type of

any other floating point literal is

double

.

The type of a boolean literal is

boolean

.

The type of a character literal is

char

.

The type of a string literal is

String

.

The type of the null literal

null

 is the null type; its value is the null reference.

Evaluation of a literal always completes normally.

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