What is difference between initialized variable and a literal in java?

Question

I am learning java, while studying literals in java I found that literals can be of any datatype (int,boolean,char,etc.) and declared as

int decVal = 26;   //Am I declaring literal correctly?

As far as I know, a literal is fixed value and above declaration is very similar to initialization of a variable of 'int' type. To confirm, I tried following code.

public class LiteralChecking {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int i=2;

        for(i=2;i<5;i++)
        {
            System.out.println("i= "+i);
        }
    }
}

Where, i got output as:

i=2
i=3
i=4

now I am confused between the literal and initialization, are both same? Can some one explain me the difference?

Answer 1

Am I declaring literal correctly?

No, you're not declaring a literal. You're declaring and initializing a variable called decVal . 26 is an integer literal.

I am confused between the literal and initialization

• A literal is a value in the program code. Examples of literals include

  • "Hello" -- A string literal
  • true -- A boolean literal
  • 26 -- An integer literal

• An initialization is an assignment, such as int i = ... where ... is the value to initialize i with.

Answer 2

int decVal = 26;

"int" is the datatype

"decVal " is the name of the variable

"26" is the literal

see also here

Answer 3

26 is a literal. true is a literal. 54.4 is a literal.

int decVal = 26; is a declaration + initialization of a variable.

Answer 4

A literal is a number/string/boolean that appears in your source code. 5 is an integer literal. "Hello" is a string literal. It literally means the string "Hello" - it doesn't, for example, access a variable called Hello.

int decVal = 26; is a declaration and initialisation of the variable decVal , which happens to use a literal ( 26 ) as the initial value.