Type conversion

The ARL rule language allows you to convert values from one data type to another.

Implicit type conversion

Primitive types support implicit conversions also known as widening conversions.

Widening conversions mean that you convert smaller types to larger types:

byte to short, int, long, float, or double
short to int, long, float, or double
int to long, float, or double
long to float or double
float to double

Note: Converting int to float, or long to float or double, can result in a loss of precision.

Autoboxing and unboxing conversion

Autoboxing is the automatic conversion performed by the ARL compiler to convert primitive types to their corresponding object wrapper classes. For example, converting an int to an Integer, or a double to a Double.

If the conversion goes the other way, this is called unboxing.

Cast operator

Regular Java-like operators can be used to convert values from one type into another. For example:

int x = 20;
byte y = (byte)x;

As operator

Like in C#, the cast operator as can be used to perform conversions between reference types or nullable types. For example:

Customer customer = person as Customer;