Question

So java has a long type suffix for literals: (123L), a double type suffix (43.21D), a floating point suffix (1.234F). So … why no byte type suffix? For example, when writing some testing code you MUST cast all your bytes when they are used as function parameters.

ByteBuffer b = ByteBuffer.allocate(100);
b.put((byte)3);   // super annoying
b.put(3b);        // if only

It is clear that using B or b would not work since it would conflict with the ability to specify a byte in hexadecimal or octal (a critical language feature). But some other letter, like Z z? or Y y (for bYte)?

Answer 1

This does not really answer the question of why, but for what it’s worth, there was a proposal put forward in March of 2009 for just this with the Y byte suffix for bytes and S for shorts: Byte/short suffix proposal