What is the difference between char and Character in Java?

Question

I need to know what is the difference between char and Character in Java because when I was making a java program, the char worked while the Character didn\'t work.

Answer 1

From the JavaDoc:

The Character class wraps a value of the primitive type char in an object. An object of type Character contains a single field whose type is char. In addition, this class provides several methods for determining a character's category (lowercase letter, digit, etc.) and for converting characters from uppercase to lowercase and vice versa.

Character information is based on the Unicode Standard, version 6.0.0.

So, char is a primitive type while Character is a class. You can use the Character to wrap char from static methods like Character.toUpperCase(char c) to use in a more "OOP way".

I imagine in your program there was an 'OOP' mistake(like init of a Character) rather than char vs Character mistake.

Answer 2

Character is an Object - thus contains a number of static methods e.g. valueOf(char),toUpperCase()

where char is a primitive data-type

Answer 3

char is a primitive type that represents a single 16 bit Unicode character while Character is a wrapper class that allows us to use char primitive concept in OOP-kind of way.

Example for char,

char ch = 'a';

Example of Character,

Character.toUpperCase(ch);

It converts 'a' to 'A'

Answer 4

char is a primitive type and Character is a class that acts as a wrapper for char.

The point of the Character class is so you can apply a range of methods to your char if needed.

More information here http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/data/characters.html