The Java language provides 7 operators that perform arithmetic on integer and floating point values.

• There are two \\+ operators:
• The binary addition operator adds one number to another one. (There is also a binary \\+ operator that performs string concatenation. That is described in a separate example.)
• The unary plus operator does nothing apart from triggering numeric promotion (see below)
• There are two \\- operators:
• The binary subtraction operator subtracts one number from another one.
• The unary minus operator is equivalent to subtracting its operand from zero.
• The binary multiply operator (*) multiplies one number by another.
• The binary divide operator (/) divides one number by another.
• The binary remainder1 operator (%) calculates the remainder when one number is divided by another.

1. This is often incorrectly referred to as the “modulus” operator. “Remainder” is the term that is used by the JLS. “Modulus” and “remainder” are not the same thing.

Operand and result types, and numeric promotion

The operators require numeric operands and produce numeric results. The operand types can be any primitive numeric type (i.e. byte, short, char, int, long, float or double) or any numeric wrapper type define in java.lang; i.e. (Byte, Character, Short, Integer, Long, Float or Double.

The result type is determined base on the types of the operand or operands, as follows:

• If either of the operands is a double or Double, then the result type is double.
• Otherwise, if either of the operands is a float or Float, then the result type is float.
• Otherwise, if either of the operands is a long or Long, then the result type is long.
• Otherwise, the result type is int. This covers byte, short and char operands as well as `int.

The result type of the operation determines how the arithmetic operation is performed, and how the operands are handled

• If the result type is double, the operands are promoted to double, and the operation is performed using 64-bit (double precision binary) IEE 754 floating point arithmetic.