Weird java behavior with casts to primitive types

Question

This was probably asked somewhere but I couldn\'t find it. Could someone clarify why this code compiles and prints out 1?

long i = (byte) + (cha         


        

Answer 1

Because both '+' and '-' are unary operators, and the casts are working on the operands of those unaries. The rest is math.

Answer 2

Unary operators and casting :)

+1 is legal

(byte) + 1 is casting +1 to a byte.

Sneaky! Made me think.

Answer 3

It's being parsed as this:

long i = (byte)( +(char)( -(int)( +(long)(-1) ) ) );

where all the + and - operators are unary + or -.

In which case, the 1 gets negated twice, so it prints out as a 1.