How to get the Max Value of an Integer in Java

In Java, integers are the primitive data type that is used to store numbers that don't have a fractional component.

Like in any programming language, integers are either positive or negative, and they do have an upper limit.

In this post, we'll learn how you can get the maximum value of an integer in Java.

Getting the maximum value of an integer

Let's look at an example of some integers and print them to the console.

JAVA
public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int a = 5;

        System.out.println(a);
    }
}

Integers take up 4 bytes of memory to store. This is important because it determines how large of an integer you can store in a variable.

This limitation means that the largest integer you can store is 2,147,483,647, also equal to 2 to the power of 31 minus 1.

The smallest integer you can store is -2,147,483,648, also equal to -2 to the power of 31.

If you try to store a number that is too large or too small outside of that range, you'll get an error, because the integer will essentially overflow.

If you don't want to remember these values, Java has built-in constants that you can use to get the maximum and minimum values of an integer.

JAVA
public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int a = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
        int b = Integer.MIN_VALUE;

        System.out.println(a);
        System.out.println(b);
    }
}

You can use these variables in your code without needing to hard-code the values.

Conclusion

In this post, we learned about how to obtain the maximum value of an integer in Java and why that limit exists in the first place.

Simply use the built-in constants to get the maximum and minimum values of an integer in Java.

Thanks for reading!

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