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I have a question about the primitive type short in Java. I am using JDK 1.6. If I have the following: short a = 2; short b = 3; short c = a + b; the compiler does not want to compile - it says that it "cannot convert from int to short" and suggests that I make a cast to short , so this: short c = (short) (a + b); really works. But my question is why do I need to cast? The values of a and b are in the range of short - the range of short values is {-32,768, 32767}. I also need to cast when I want to perform the operations -, *, / (I haven't checked for others). If I do the same for primitive type int , I do not need to cast aa+bb to int . The following works fine: int aa = 2; int bb = 3; int cc = aa +bb; I discovered this while designing a class where I needed to add two variables of type short, and the compiler wanted me to make a cast. If I do this with two variables of type int , I don't need to cast. A small remark: the same thing also happens with the primitive type byte . So, this works: byte a = 2; byte b = 3; byte c = (byte) (a + b); but this not: byte a = 2; byte b = 3; byte c = a + b; For long , float , double , and int , there is no need to cast. Only for short and byte values.

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