What does “possible lossy conversion” mean and how

Question

New Java programmers are often confused by compilation error messages like:

"incompatible types: possible lossy conversion from double to int"

for this line of code:

int squareRoot = Math.sqrt(i);

What does this error mean, and how do you fix it?

Answer 1

First of all, this is a compilation error. If you ever see it in an exception message at runtime, it is because you have have run a program with compilation errors¹.

The general form of the message is this:

"incompatible types: possible lossy conversion from <type1> to <type2>"

where <type1> and <type2> are both primitive numeric types; i.e. one of byte, char, short, int, long, float or double.

This error happens when your code attempts to do an implicit conversion from <type1> to <type2> but the conversion could be lossy.

In the example in the question:

  int squareRoot = Math.sqrt(i);

the sqrt method produces a double, but a conversion from double to int is potentially lossy.

What does "potentially lossy" mean?

Well lets look at a couple of examples.

1. A conversion of a long to an int is a potentially lossy conversion because there are long values that do not have a corresponding int value. For example, any long value that is greater than 2^31 - 1 is too large to be represented as an int. Similarly, any number less than -2^31 is too small.

2. A conversion of an int to a long is NOT lossy conversion because every int value has a corresponding long value.

3. A conversion of a float to an long is a potentially lossy conversion because there float values that are too large or too small to represent as long values.

4. A conversion of an long to a float is NOT lossy conversion because every long value has a corresponding float value. (The converted value may be less precise, but "lossiness" doesn't mean that ... in this context.)

These are all the conversions that are potentially lossy:

• short to byte or char
• char to byte or short
• int to byte, short or char
• long to byte, short, char or int
• float to byte, short, char, int or long
• double to byte, short, char, int, long or float.

How do you fix the error?

The way to make the compilation error go away is to add a typecast. For example;

  int i = 47;
  int squareRoot = Math.sqrt(i);         // compilation error!

becomes

  int i = 47;
  int squareRoot = (int) Math.sqrt(i);   // no compilation error

But is that really a fix? Consider that the square root of 47 is 6.8556546004 ... but squareRoot will get the value 6. (The conversion will truncate, not round.)

And what about this?

  byte b = (int) 512;

That results in b getting the value 0. Converting from a larger int type to a smaller int type is done by masking out the high order bits, and the low-order 8 bits of 512 are all zero.

In short, you should not simply add a typecast, because it might not do the correct thing for your application.

Instead, you need to understand why your code needs to do a conversion:

• Is this happening because you have made some other mistake in your code?
• Should the <type1> be a different type, so that a lossy conversion isn't needed here?
• If a conversion is necessary, is the silent lossy conversion that the typecast will do the correct behavior?
• Or should your code be doing some range checks and dealing with incorrect / unexpected values by throwing an exception?

Some specific cases:

"Possible lossy conversion" when subscripting.

First example:

for (double d = 0; d < 10.0; d += 1.0) {
    System.out.println(array[d]);  // <<-- possible lossy conversion
}

The problem here is that array index value must be int. So d has to be converted from double to int. In general, using a floating point value as an index doesn't make sense. Either someone is under the impression that Java arrays work like (say) Python dictionaries, or they have overlooked the fact that floating-point arithmetic is often inexact.

The solution is to rewrite the code to avoid using a floating point value as an array index. (Adding a type cast is probably an incorrect solution.)

Second example:

for (long l = 0; l < 10; l++) {
    System.out.println(array[l]);  // <<-- possible lossy conversion
}

This is a variation of the previous problem, and the solution is the same. The difference is that the root cause is that Java arrays are limited to 32 bit indexes. If you want an "array like" data structure which has more than 2³¹ - 1 elements, you need to define or find a class to do it.

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^{1 - For instance, the Eclipse IDE has an option which allows you to ignore compilation errors and run the code anyway. If you select this, the IDE's compiler will create a .class file where the method with the error will throw an unchecked exception if it is called. The exception message will mention the compilation error message.}